‘Game on’: Tech execs say DeepSeek ramps up China-U.S. competition but won’t hurt OpenAI
Tech bosses largely agree the risk DeepSeek poses to OpenAI remains limited for now.
Bloomberg | Bloomberg | Getty Images
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.”
“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.
“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.
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.”
“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
Amazon launches second batch of Kuiper internet satellites, taking on Elon Musk’s Starlink
An Atlas V rocket of United Launch Alliance (ULA) lifts off from Space Launch Complex 41 at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida on June 23, 2025.
Gregg Newton | Afp | Getty Images
Amazon‘s second batch of Kuiper internet satellites reached low Earth orbit on Monday, adding to its plans for a massive constellation and ramping up competition with SpaceX’s Starlink.
A United Launch Alliance rocket carrying 27 Kuiper satellites lifted off from a launchpad at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida at 6:54 a.m. ET, according to a livestream.
“We have ignition and lift off of United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket carrying satellites for Amazon’s Project Kuiper internet constellation, continuing a new chapter in low Earth orbit satellite connectivity,” Ben Chilton, an ordnance engineer at ULA, said on the livestream following the launch.
Monday’s mission was rescheduled twice, owing to inclement weather and a problem with the rocket booster.
Six years ago, Amazon unveiled its plans to build a constellation of internet-beaming satellites in low Earth orbit, called Project Kuiper. The service will compete directly with Elon Musk’s Starlink, which currently dominates the market and has 8,000 satellites in orbit.
Amazon in April successfully sent up 27 Kuiper internet satellites into low Earth orbit, a region of space that’s within 1,200 miles of the Earth’s surface.
The 54 craft currently in orbit are the start of Amazon’s planned constellation of 3,236 satellites. The company has to meet a Federal Communications Commission deadline to launch half of its total constellation, or 1,618 satellites, by July 2026.
The company has booked more than 80 launches with several providers, including rival SpaceX, to deliver Kuiper its satellites into orbit.
WATCH: Amazon Web Services CEO: Lots of opportunity to expand infrastructure globally
U.S. President Donald Trump speaks to the media upon arrival at Joint Base Andrews following a visit to North Carolina, in Maryland, U.S., June 10, 2025.
Evelyn Hockstein | Reuters
Trump Media & Technology Group, the parent company of Truth Social, Truth+, and the fintech platform Truth.Fi, said Monday its board has approved a stock buyback of up to $400 million.
Trump Media stock rose about 3% on the news premarket.
The Florida-based company, which trades under the ticker DJT on both Nasdaq and NYSE Texas, said the buyback could include both common stock and warrants, executed through open market transactions. All repurchased shares would be retired.
“Since Trump Media now has approximately $3 billion on its balance sheet, we have the flexibility to take actions like this which support strong shareholder returns, as we continue exploring further strategic opportunities,” said CEO Devin Nunes in a release announcing the move.
President Donald Trump, who indirectly owns more than 114 million shares of the company through a revocable trust, remains the largest shareholder.
The announcement follows Trump Media’s $2.5 billion raise last month from institutional investors — one of the largest bitcoin treasury plays by a public company. The company said it would use those funds, which include $1.5 billion in equity and $1 billion in convertible notes, to buy bitcoin, with custody provided by Anchorage Digital and Crypto.com.
Calling bitcoin a “crown jewel,” Nunes said the move was designed to defend the company against what he described as “discrimination by financial institutions” against conservative businesses. The funds will also support the launch of Trump-branded exchange-traded funds and other crypto products later this year, pending regulatory approval.
Trump Media said the buyback will be funded independently and will not affect the capital already earmarked for its bitcoin treasury initiative.
In February, Trump Media reported a $400.9 million net loss for the full year on just $3.6 million in annual revenue. The company cited legal fees and a revised advertising revenue-sharing agreement as contributing factors.
Despite the losses, Trump Media said it ended the year with $776.8 million in cash and short-term investments.
The company, which went public via special purpose acquisition company, or SPAC, last year, now trades with a market capitalization of around $4.9 billion.
The stock nearly doubled in 2024 as Trump won the U.S. presidential election in November. As of Friday’s close, the stock was down nearly 48% this year.
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