Why DeepSeek’s new model has been met with a shrug

But it seems that, unlike DeepSeek’s previous blockbuster, v4 was not cheap to build. In 2025 the lab eagerly pointed out that the cost of training its AI was about $6m, far below the going rate in the West. The lab’s technical white paper on v4 omits any estimate of this measure. The fact that 16 months elapsed between v4 and its predecessor also hints that oodles of processing power were used to train it. The release comes at a time when China’s AI scene is increasingly crowded. DeepSeek has faced growing competition both from other independent labs, such as…