The DeepSeek episode: separating fact and fiction

"Throughout the last week, DeepSeek’s legend grew, with each new thread on X seemingly competing to explain a new way that DeepSeek’s R1 means the end of the line for OpenAI, Nvidia, Meta, Anthropic, the U.S. AI industry in general, and proves the uselessness of the U.S. chip export controls. That escalated quickly."

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"Dylan Patel of SemiAnalysis, one of the best-informed semiconductor industry analysts, reported back in November 2024 that DeepSeek had 50,000 Nvidia H100’s4 , an export-controlled GPU. And there’s not a lot of mystery about how they got there: Almost a quarter of Nvidia’s revenue is coming from Singapore, and Nvidia Singapore PTE Ltd is headquartered in… Hong Kong5 . The evasion of export controls includes chipmaking equipment."

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