Technology

‘Game on’: Tech execs say DeepSeek ramps up China-U.S. competition but won’t hurt OpenAI

Published

4 months ago

February 17, 2025

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Tech bosses largely agree the risk DeepSeek poses to OpenAI remains limited for now.

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The technological advances that Chinese artificial intelligence lab DeepSeek have displayed show the game is on when it comes to U.S.-Sino competition on AI, top tech executives told CNBC.

In a series of interviews at France’s Artificial Intelligence Action Summit, leaders of several major tech companies told CNBC that the emergence of DeepSeek demonstrates that China can’t be counted out as a serious player when it comes to AI innovation.

Last month, DeepSeek shocked global markets with a technical paper saying that one of its new AI models was created with a total training cost of less than $6 million — far less than the billions upon billions of dollars being spent by Big Tech players and Western AI labs such as OpenAI and Anthropic.

Chris Lehane, chief global affairs officer at OpenAI, told CNBC that DeepSeek’s advanced, low-cost model confirms there is a “very real competition between U.S.-led, small D democratic AI and CCP [Chinese Communist Party] China-led autocratic, authoritarian AI.”

Many critics of DeepSeek have pointed to apparent censorship by the model when it comes to sensitive topics. For example, when asked about the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, DeepSeek’s AI assistant app responds with: “Sorry, that’s beyond my current scope. Let’s talk about something else.”

OpenAI exec: DeepSeek reaffirms that there's real competition in AI

“There’s two countries in the world that can build this at scale,” Lehane told CNBC’s Arjun Kharpal on the sidelines of the Paris AI summit Monday. “Imagine if there were only two countries in the world that could build electricity at scale. That’s sort of how you have to think about it.”

“For us, what DeepSeek really reinforces and reaffirms is that there is this very real competition with very real stakes,” Lehane added.

Still, tech bosses largely agreed that even though DeepSeek’s breakthrough shows China being further along in the global AI race than previously thought, the threat it poses to OpenAI remains limited for now.

‘The game is on’

DeepSeek says that its new R1 model, an open-source reasoning model, was able to rival the performance of OpenAI’s own similar o1 model — only using a cheaper, less energy-intensive process.

That led experts to question the prevailing wisdom in the West of the last several years, which is that China is behind the U.S. on AI development because of export restrictions that make it harder for firms in the country to get their hands on more advanced Nvidia graphics processing units, or GPUs.

GPUs are necessary for training and running AI applications because they excel at parallel processing, meaning they can perform multiple calculations simultaneously.

Reid Hoffman, a co-founder of LinkedIn and partner at the venture capital firm Greylock Partners, told CNBC Monday that DeepSeek’s new model is “a big deal in showing that the game is on.”

“The competition is afoot with China,” Hoffman said, adding that DeepSeek’s R1 is “a credible, actionable model.”

Abishur Prakash, founder of strategic advisory firm The Geopolitical Business, told CNBC that DeepSeek shows the West’s understanding of China remains limited.

Reid Hoffman: Most market fears around DeepSeek are misplaced

“America’s assumed place as the technological captain of the world is no longer the acceptable belief,” Prakash told CNBC in a phone interview.

“That is the new status quo now, that the space between the U.S. and China has narrowed almost overnight — but it hasn’t narrowed overnight, it’s been years of progress,” Prakash said.

“If there’s one takeaway for the West, it’s that their understanding of China is incredibly limited — and we don’t know what’s coming next,” he added.

No meaningful threat to U.S. AI — yet

Still, leading AI execs aren’t convinced that DeepSeek poses any sort of meaningful risks to the businesses of AI labs like OpenAI and Anthropic just yet.

While experts on the whole agree DeepSeek’s AI advances have been impressive, doubts have been raised about the startup’s claims about cost.

AI is not a race between the U.S. and Europe, Orange CEO says

A report from semiconductor research firm SemiAnalysis last month estimated that DeepSeek’s hardware expenditure is “well higher” than $500 million over the company’s history. DeepSeek was not immediately available for comment when contacted by CNBC.

The report found that DeepSeek’s research and development costs and expenses related to ownership are significant and that generating “synthetic data” for the model to train on would require “considerable amount of compute.”

Some technologists believe that DeepSeek may have been able to achieve such a high level of performance by training its models on larger U.S. AI systems.

This technique, known as “distillation,” involves having more powerful AI models evaluate the quality of answers being generated by a newer model.

It’s a claim that OpenAI itself has alluded to, telling CNBC in a statement last month that it’s reviewing reports that DeepSeek may have “inappropriately” used output data from its models to develop its AI model, a method referred to as “distillation.”

“Most of the market fear around [DeepSeek] is in fact misplaced,” Hoffman told CNBC. “It still requires large models — it was distilled from large models.”

Open-source AI will have a massive impact on the world, says Hugging Face CEO

“I think the short answer everyone should take is: game on — but large models still really matter,” he added.

Victor Riparbelli, CEO of AI video platform Synthesia, told CNBC that although DeepSeek challenged the “paradigm that brute force scaling is the only way to kind of build better and better models,” the idea that companies are going to suddenly shift significant amounts of their AI workloads is misguided.

“I still think that when you look at users of these technologies, all the workflows, I think when we look back in three months’ time, I think 0.01% of those is going to be moved to Deepseek from OpenAI and Anthropic,” Riparbelli said.

Meredith Whitaker, president of the Signal Foundation, said DeepSeek’s development doesn’t move the needle much for the industry as market momentum is still broadly in favor of larger AI models. The Signal Foundation is a nonprofit that supports the encrypted messaging app Signal.

“This is not something that’s going to disrupt the concentration of power or the geopolitical balance at this stage,” Whitaker told CNBC. “I think we have to keep our eye on the ball there and recognize that it’s really this ‘bigger is better’ paradigm that is not reduced through efficiency gains historically, that is driving this concentration.”

Technology

Tech investor Prosus bets on India to produce a $100 billion company

Published

2 hours ago

June 23, 2025

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Tech investor Prosus bets on India to produce a 0 billion company

Fabricio Bloisi, chief executive officer of Prosus NV, during an interview in London, UK, on Monday, Oct. 21, 2024. Bloisi took the reins of South Africa’s Naspers Ltd. and its investment arm Prosus NV in July with a plan to double the value of the 110-year-old group within the next four years.

Jose Sarmento Matos | Bloomberg | Getty Images

India will produce a $100 billion tech company in the coming years, the CEO of Prosus told CNBC on Monday, as the firm bets on the country for its next big investment win.

Prosus, which is majority owned by South African company Naspers, is one of the biggest tech investors in the world.

The company is hoping it can replicate the success it saw with its return on Chinese social media and gaming giant Tencent. Prosus’ parent company Naspers bought a near 50% holding in Tencent back in 2001 for around $32 million. That early stake in Tencent is now worth billions of dollars, with the WeChat operator valued at nearly $600 billion as of Monday.

“The companies there [in India] are still small, our investment there is around $10 billion, as it was in China 14 years ago,” Prosus CEO Fabricio Bloisi told CNBC.

“What’s the learning? We believe it’s going to be, not a $20 billion company, but a $100 billion company, maybe [a] half a trillion dollar company in India. So we are not investing there to sell next month.”

Prosus has invested in some of the buzziest tech firms in India, including payments service PayU and e-commerce company Meesho. Prosus also owns just under 25% of food delivery firm Swiggy, which went public in November.

Bloisi said listing Prosus’ India investments are a key part of its strategy. He added that he expects five Indian companies that Prosus is invested in to carry out an initial public offering this year.

“I think this is very good for India, because we have the local markets here investing in the local companies. This was critical for U.S., this was critical for China. I think if India can greater strong local markets investing in tech, it’s going to be amazing for India,” Bloisi said.

Prosus has also been targeting big investments in Europe and the Latin America.

The company’s playbook revolves around the idea of ecosystems surrounding services, which Tencent managed to execute in China. Tencent runs China’s biggest messaging app called WeChat, which integrates features like payments and the ability to hail taxis or order food.

“We believe that we have ecosystems, just like we have in China in the U.S., like Microsoft or Uber or Google or Meta. They’re not just one product. They have one product that enables cross-sell and technology shared between many other adjacencies. That’s what we are doing,” Bloisi said.

In Latin America, Prosus has stakes in Brazilian food delivery firm iFood, online travel firm Despegar and online marketplace OLX Brasil.

Bloisi said food delivery and payments are the foundation of their investments, followed by areas like e-commerce and experiences such as travel.

“That’s the kind of ecosystem we believe. We learned that from China, we are doing that in that in Latin America right now, very, very successfully,” Bloisi said.

In the meantime, Prosus this year made a proposal to acquire European food delivery giant Just Eat Takeaway.com in an all-cash deal worth around 4.1 billion euros ($4.7 billion).

Bloisi said Prosus on Monday officially began proceedings to seek permission from the European Commission to approve the deal. The Prosus CEO said he was “optimistic” that the European regulators will “approve it quickly.”

Technology

Easy returns cause big trouble for Amazon sellers, but return rates show signs of slowing

Published

2 days ago

June 21, 2025

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Easy returns cause big trouble for Amazon sellers, but return rates show signs of slowing

Returns on Amazon are free and easy for shoppers, but they’re risky and expensive for the small businesses that sell a majority of the goods on the world’s biggest e-commerce site. Returns have driven some sellers to exit the popular Fulfillment by Amazon program, while others told CNBC they’d like to leave the platform altogether.

At the heart of the problem is a big rise in returns fraud, which has led to customers mistakenly receiving used products when they ordered something new. In two particularly egregious examples involving baby products described to CNBC, Amazon sent customers used diapers and a chiller with someone else’s rotten breastmilk inside.

“I really don’t think that consumers understand how many small businesses are on Amazon and how their return habits affect small businesses and families like mine,” said Rachelle Baron, owner of Beau and Belle Littles, which sells reusable swim diapers on Amazon.

Baron said her business tanked after a return incident with Amazon. The e-commerce platform shipped soiled swim diapers to customers after the used baby products had been returned to Amazon, Baron said.

“There was actually two diapers that were sent out that were poopy,” she said.

In 2024, nearly 14% of all U.S. retail returns were fraudulent, up from 5% in 2018, according to a report by the National Retail Federation. In total, the report found that returns cost retailers $890 billion in 2024.

Amazon started charging sellers in its fulfillment program (FBA) a new fee in June 2024 for items that exceed certain return rate thresholds. Sellers who sign up for FBA rely on Amazon for logistics, including shipping, packing and returns.

In September, a couple months after the fee went into effect, e-commerce group Helium 10 saw return rates for U.S. Amazon sellers drop nearly 5%.

“It’s forcing the seller to have higher quality listings and higher quality products,” said Helium 10 General Manager Zoe Lu.

Amazon has also started adding a warning label to some “frequently returned items,” which could be contributing to the dip.

Rising prices

However, the new fee may also be leading to rising prices.

One survey by e-commerce analysis company SmartScout found that 65% of sellers said they raised prices in 2024 directly because of Amazon fee changes. Other sellers told CNBC returns fraud is the reason they’ve raised prices.

In total, CNBC talked to seven Amazon sellers to find out how they’re handling the rising cost of returns.

“We’re running at about just over 1% net profit on Amazon, totally due to fraud and return abuse,” said Lorie Corlett, who sells Sterling Spectrum protective cases for hot wheels. She said her return rate is 4% on Amazon and only 1% on other marketplaces like Walmart. “It’s really Amazon that’s accountable at the end of the day. People would stop doing it if Amazon held them accountable.”

Amazon told CNBC it has no tolerance for fraudulent returns and that it takes action against some scammers. Those measures include denying refunds and requiring customer identity verification.

Mike Jelliff sells professional music gear through his GeekStands brand on Amazon and eight other marketplaces. He said his return rate on Amazon is three times higher than the average he sees elsewhere.

“On eBay, we’re allowed to block specific customers out,” Jelliff said. “But on Amazon, that customer is still allowed to repurchase from us.”

Jelliff showed CNBC the system of about 40 cameras he’s installed in his Tyler, Texas, warehouse to track every outgoing item, incoming return and unboxing. He uses the images when filing appeals with Amazon, including when customers request refunds claiming they never receive an item. He keeps a blacklist of repeat offenders who commit this kind of fraud and those who return used and damaged items, which become a total loss for him.

Amazon has made some improvements to its returns process, said Jelliff, who doesn’t rely on FBA. This includes Amazon allowing small businesses to make multiple appeals when fighting a fraudulent return. Amazon has also let Jelliff opt-out of automatic return labels for items above $100 starting in 2023, and his return rate has been dropping since.

Mike Jelliff at his GeekStands warehouse in Tyler, Texas, on June 6, 2025. Jelliff sees three times more returns of his professional music gear on Amazon, compared to the average on other marketplaces like eBay and Walmart.

Jacob Schatz

Why returns are destroyed

Figuring out which returns are fraudulent and which are ready for re-sale is labor-intensive and item specific, experts said. That creates plenty of room for error.

“Because it’s such a large operation, things are missed,” said Lu of Helium 10. “I think they’re probably missed on the margins, but these stories are very impactful because it is such a reckoning for the brand.”

Ceres Chill founder Lisa Myers, who once relied on Amazon to handle returns for her business as part of FBA, has one of these stories.

In 2023, Amazon sent one of Ceres Chill’s products to a customer with someone else’s rotten breastmilk inside, said Myers, adding that the customer wrote a review saying, “she will never forget that smell.”

“To have something, and I don’t mean to be dramatic, but dangerous, somebody else’s bodily fluids in your kitchen rotting in something that you had intended to use for your child is unacceptable,” Myers said. “That’s the moment I broke down crying and just sat down and thought, I have no idea how this could have happened.”

Myers said she left FBA after the incident, leaving behind benefits like having her products labeled with Amazon’s Prime badge.

“It hurts our business to not participate in Fulfilled by Amazon,” Myers said. “It’s just we’re not willing to, we will never put profit over the safety and, frankly, mental health of our customers.”

Instead, Myers outsources all her returns to baby resell specialist Goodbuy Gear, which is on track to re-sell 200,000 returned baby products this year.

Re-selling responsibly

Kristin Langenfeld started GoodBuy Gear when she was a new mom struggling to find a good quality, used jogging stroller.

“We’ve spent the last nine years building out a database that has all of the products and the variations, the common issues, the recalls,” Langenfeld said. “For some of these, there’s 40 points that we inspect on the item itself, and it’s really complicated.”

Langenfeld showed CNBC the process at her warehouse in Malvern, Pennsylvania, where each item is inspected for about 15 minutes and is typically handled by at least four employees. The resource intensive process is paying off. She says 33 new sellers signed up in 2024, three times more than the previous year. And with business growing 50% year-over-year, she’s upgrading to a bigger warehouse in Columbus, Ohio.

She was inspired to handle returns after visiting a major retailer’s returns warehouse five years ago.

“Taped on the floor were signs that said ‘incinerate,’ ‘destroy,'” she said.

Returns generated an estimated 29 million metric tons of carbon emissions in 2024, and 9.8 billion pounds of returns ended up in landfills, according to reverse logistics software provider Optoro.

Amazon has faced criticism for destroying millions of pounds of unused products. In 2022, Amazon told CNBC it was “working towards a goal of zero product disposal,” but wouldn’t give a timeline for that ambition. Three years later, that goal is still in the works, with Amazon telling CNBC in a statement, “The vast majority of returns are resold as new or used, returned to selling partners, liquidated, or donated.”

In 2020, Amazon added two new options for sellers to re-home returns. “Grade and Resell” allows all U.S. FBA sellers to have Amazon rate the return and mark it as “used” before re-selling it. FBA Liquidation allows sellers to recoup some losses by offloading palettes of goods for re-sale on the secondary market through liquidation partners like Liquidity Services.

There’s also an FBA Donations program that’s been around since 2019, allowing sellers to automatically offer eligible overstock and returns to charity groups through the non-profit Good360. Amazon told CNBC these seller programs give a second life to more than 300 million items a year.

For shoppers wanting to keep returns from incineration or landfills, Amazon also has options.

Amazon Resale has used and open-box goods, Amazon Renewed sells refurbished items and Amazon Outlet sells overstock. Daily deal site Woot!, bought by Amazon for $110 million in 2010, also sells scratched and dented items. Customers can also trade in certain electronics, like Amazon devices, phones and tablets, for Amazon gift cards or send them to the company’s certified recycler.

“I hope the change that we’re able to make as a country is that we stop making crap,” Langenfeld said. “We should make high quality products that are meant for resale.”

Technology

Meta approached Perplexity before massive Scale AI deal

Published

3 days ago

June 20, 2025

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Meta approached Perplexity before massive Scale AI deal

Meta approached artificial intelligence startup Perplexity AI about a potential takeover bid before ultimately investing $14.3 billion into Scale AI, CNBC confirmed on Friday.

The two companies did not finalize a deal, according to two people familiar with the matter who asked not to be named because of the confidential nature of the negotiations.

One person familiar with the talks said it was “mutually dissolved,” while another person familiar with the matter said Perplexity walked away from a potential deal.

Bloomberg earlier reported the talks between Meta and Perplexity. Perplexity declined to comment. Meta did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment.

Meta’s attempt to purchase Perplexity serves as the latest example of Mark Zuckerberg‘s aggressive push to bolster his company’s AI efforts amid fierce competition from OpenAI and Google parent Alphabet. Zuckerberg has grown agitated that rivals like OpenAI appear to be ahead in both underlying AI models and consumer-facing apps, and he is going to extreme lengths to hire top AI talent, as CNBC has previously reported.