Tech war: after DeepSeek AI shock, how far can China go to nurture and keep top talent?

Name: Does the arrival of China’s low-cost DeepSeek mean the end of Nvidia’s chip dominance?
Uploaded: 2025-02-10T14:00:09.000Z
Duration: 5 min
Description: Does the arrival of China’s low-cost DeepSeek mean the end of Nvidia’s chip dominance?

In a global race to innovate, China’s next-generation tech talent needs more than resources – they also need freedom, experts say

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DeepSeek challenges conventional tech talent criteria by proving that innovation isn’t solely dependent on overseas-trained experts or experience in Silicon Valley-style ecosystems, according to experts. Photo: AFP

Meredith Chen

Published: 10:00pm, 10 Feb 2025Updated: 10:18pm, 10 Feb 2025

Among the many storylines emerging in the wake of the sudden rise of Chinese AI development firm DeepSeek has been the importance of talent retention, which has taken on a new sense of urgency in light of the country’s growing tech race with the United States, according to analysts.

The debut of the little known start-up has continued to make global headlines with its low-cost, open-source large language models (LLMs) that rival US-based OpenAI’s ChatGPT.

The success of the Hangzhou-based company, fuelled by a group of young, domestically trained engineers, has shown that Chinese teams can make the leap from replication to innovation, suggesting that the nation’s decades of effort to nurture its own talent has started to pay off, analysts said.

The US-China talent competition would “ultimately depend more on the battle of institutional conditions and innovation environments for talent development”, according to Dai Mingjie, an associate researcher with the Institute of Public Policy, an independent think tank under South China University of Technology.

But the risks of a significant tech brain drain – the outflow of Chinese tech talent and enterprises – rise depending on potential shifts in US policy to attract more global capital and technology industry resources, according to an article published by the institute earlier this month, co-authored by Dai.

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Does the arrival of China’s low-cost DeepSeek mean the end of Nvidia’s chip dominance?

To accelerate artificial intelligence research and development in Silicon Valley, the US is moving to deregulate artificial intelligence, the article said.