China Future Tech webinar | How is DeepSeek shaping the race for AI supremacy?

Chinese artificial intelligence start-up DeepSeek has sent shock waves through Silicon Valley and Wall Street with its low-cost, high-performance models.

It has boosted confidence and morale among China’s AI community for showing that the country can develop AI capabilities on a par with, if not better than, the United States, despite Washington’s export restrictions on advanced chips.

Much, however, remains unknown about the low profile company, which was founded less than two years ago by Chinese hedge-fund manager Liang Wenfeng.

The South China Morning Post hosted a webinar to address some common questions from our readers about DeepSeek, including:

• Does DeepSeek have government backing, and how does it align with China’s AI regulatory framework?

• Is DeepSeek superior and more reliable than ChatGPT?

• How will DeepSeek overcome an intensifying US semiconductor stranglehold?

• How does DeepSeek being more energy- and cost-efficient change the needs of infrastructure, especially in the supply of and demand for data centres?

• Did DeepSeek benefit from existing US technology and code?

Our panellists are:

• Jacques van Wersch, Director of SCMP Plus (moderator)

• Zhou Xin, SCMP Technology Editor

• Matt Haldane, SCMP Technology Production Editor

• Josephine Ma, SCMP China News Editor