DeepSeek launched a free, open-source large language model in late December, claiming it was developed in just two months at a cost of under $6 million.
That’s generally how tech goes though. You throw hardware at the problem until it works, and then you optimize it to run on laptops and eventually phones. Usually hardware improvements and software optimizations meet somewhere in the middle.
Look at photo and video editing, you used to need a workstation for that, and now you can get most of it on your phone. Surely AI is destined to follow the same path, with local models getting more and more robust until eventually the beefy cloud services are no longer required.
The problem for American tech companies is that they didn’t even try to move to stage 2.
OpenAI is hemorrhaging money even on their most expensive subscription and their entire business plan was to hemorrhage money even faster to the point they would use entire power stations to power their data centers. Their plan makes about as much sense as digging your self out of a hole by trying to dig to the other side of the globe.
Hey, my friends and I would’ve made it to China if recess was a bit longer.
Seriously though, the goal for something like OpenAI shouldn’t be to sell products to end customers, but to license models to companies that sell “solutions.” I see these direct to consumer devices similarly to how GPU manufacturers see reference cards or how Valve sees the Steam Deck: they’re a proof of concept for others to follow.
OpenAI should be looking to be more like ARM and less like Apple. If they do that, they might just grow into their valuation.
Or from the sounds of it, doing things more efficiently.
Fewer cycles required, less hardware required.
Maybe this was an inevitability, if you cut off access to the fast hardware, you create a natural advantage for more efficient systems.
That’s generally how tech goes though. You throw hardware at the problem until it works, and then you optimize it to run on laptops and eventually phones. Usually hardware improvements and software optimizations meet somewhere in the middle.
Look at photo and video editing, you used to need a workstation for that, and now you can get most of it on your phone. Surely AI is destined to follow the same path, with local models getting more and more robust until eventually the beefy cloud services are no longer required.
The problem for American tech companies is that they didn’t even try to move to stage 2.
OpenAI is hemorrhaging money even on their most expensive subscription and their entire business plan was to hemorrhage money even faster to the point they would use entire power stations to power their data centers. Their plan makes about as much sense as digging your self out of a hole by trying to dig to the other side of the globe.
Hey, my friends and I would’ve made it to China if recess was a bit longer.
Seriously though, the goal for something like OpenAI shouldn’t be to sell products to end customers, but to license models to companies that sell “solutions.” I see these direct to consumer devices similarly to how GPU manufacturers see reference cards or how Valve sees the Steam Deck: they’re a proof of concept for others to follow.
OpenAI should be looking to be more like ARM and less like Apple. If they do that, they might just grow into their valuation.