Sam Altman's Old Video Is Viral Amid Success Of China's Cheap AI Model

There's a new entrant in the Artificial Intelligence chatbot market from China. It is competing with giants like OpenAI, Gemini, ClaudeAI, etc. disrupting the American hegemony in AI-based generative chatbot models. DeepSeek - the Chinese alternative to American-made AI models - has taken the industry by storm.

DeepSeek founders spent only $5.6 million to build the model. This is just a fraction of the budget used by giants like OpenAI, Google's Gemini and ClaudeAI to build their models.

Now an old video of OpenAI founder, Sam Altman is viral where he called building an AI model on a budget of $10 million "hopeless". Speaking at an event in 2023 in India, Mr Altman was asked, "How is a small, smart team with a budget of $10 million could build something substantial within AI?"

This is pretty hilarious in retrospect.

In India in 2023, Altman was asked how if a small, smart team with a budget of $10 million could build something substantial within AI.

His reply: "It's totally hopeless to compete with us on training foundation models" https://t.co/pdYIhV2x1m

— Arnaud Bertrand (@RnaudBertrand) January 28, 2025

His reply: "It's totally hopeless to compete with us on training foundation models". DeepSeek's chatbot has become the top-rated free application on Apple's US App Store and American chipmaker Nvidia has lost almost $600 billion in valuation in a single day - the biggest for a single stock in market history.

DeepSeek gained traction last month when it stated in a paper that training its DeepSeek-V3 model required less than $6 million in computing power using the lower-capability Nvidia H800 chips.

DeepSeek-R1, launched last week, is 20 to 50 times more affordable to use than OpenAI's o1 model, depending on the task, according to a post on DeepSeek's official WeChat account.

Mr Altman has praised his rival's RI model on X and said, "DeepSeek's r1 is an impressive model, particularly around what they're able to deliver for the price."

"But mostly we are excited to continue to execute on our research roadmap and believe more computing is more important now than ever before to succeed at our mission," Altman added.

DeepSeek's popularity and low-cost production have raised questions on the American narrative of pledging billions of dollars to build generative AI models.