Chinese Tech Giants Downplay Concerns, Express Confidence in AI Race

Chinese tech companies on Friday downplayed overseas concerns over conversational robot DeepSeek, expressing confidence in the prospects of homegrown startups in the global artificial intelligence (AI) race.

Hangzhou-based DeepSeek’s chatbot R1 stunned the industry last month with its performance, matching that of Western rivals but at a fraction of the cost.

Questions about the handling of users’ personal data, however, have led several countries, including South Korea, Italy, Australia, and some US states, to restrict its use for the time being.

"For the past few years, China has faced all kinds of containment, especially from the US," Sun Dasheng, an employee of AI server maker Puersai Computer, told AFP.

"But our country is putting all its strength into moving forward," he said on the sidelines of the World Artificial Intelligence Developer Conference in Shanghai.

His enthusiasm was shared by other exhibitors, who were showcasing the use of DeepSeek’s model, even though the now-famous startup was not present at the expo—which also hosted a cast of humanoid robots.

"Now that the (DeepSeek’s R1) model is available, we believe that industries or products related to large language models will have further development," said Mark Feng, product head at Mobvoi, a conversational AI maker.

Before DeepSeek, many believed that China "was not capable of making a large AI model on par with the US," said Lian Feng, an employee of Shanghai-based Tiangang AI Trading Platform.

But China has now proven it can build competitive software, he said, and it also has a very capable supply chain, giving it an edge over the US.

US President Donald Trump has called DeepSeek a "wake-up call" for American industry, particularly due to the model R1’s comparatively low development cost.

DeepSeek said it spent just $5.6 million to develop the model, a drop in the bucket compared to the billions spent by US giants on AI in recent years.

Lian Feng, of Tiangang AI, sees DeepSeek’s success as a turning point as significant as the 2008 advent of Android, which shook up the smartphone market by offering a cheaper alternative to Apple’s iOS.

He said that the high cost of iPhones, which dominated the market at the time, "blocked the rapid growth of smartphones and the mobile internet era."

Similarly, Lian Feng believes DeepSeek will be profoundly disruptive to the market for generative AI—just as Android reshaped the smartphone industry.

"I think there is still room for improvement… I think in three to five years, we will see an even brighter landscape," said Sun Dasheng of Puersai Computer.