The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine.
The Chinese AI company DeepSeek released a chatbot earlier this year called R1, which drew a huge amount of attention. Most of it data-offer-url=”https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/23/technology/deepseek-china-ai-chips.html” class=”external-link” data-event-click=”{"element":"ExternalLink","outgoingURL":"https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/23/technology/deepseek-china-ai-chips.html"}” href=”https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/23/technology/deepseek-china-ai-chips.html” rel=”nofollow noopener” target=”_blank”>focused on the fact that a relatively small and unknown company said it had built a chatbot that rivaled the performance of those from the world’s most famous AI companies, but using a fraction of the computer power and cost. As a result, the stocks of many Western tech companies plummeted; Nvidia, which sells the…
