DeepSeek · China · U.S. · FBI · Fortune Technology
Ran into with less compute and fewer tokens, Chinese AI labs are tightening the gap with the U.S. by just being more efficient
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◎ Multiple-sources
The race between the world’s two biggest economies to dominate AI recently escalated with new accusations and raised the question of how China came to rival the U.S.’s AI capabilities.
Key facts
- The FBI, the National Security Agency, and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency said Tuesday that DeepSeek, Moonshot, and four others extracted “capabilities worth billions
- AI coding startup Cursor also used Kimi to help build its Composer 2 coding agent
- The cost difference might end up mattering as AI spending consumes a bigger share of corporate budgets, with 20% of business leaders surveyed by McKinsey saying AI-related costs like buying tokens
- DoorDash CEO Andy Fang said using Moonshot AI’s Kimi was “cheaper” and “better quality” without degrading the quality of code
Summary
Six Chinese AI companies, U.S. officials alleged earlier this week, found a shortcut to closing the gap with American AI labs by buying bulk subscriptions to their American rivals and then training on the outputs. The FBI, the National Security Agency, and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency said Tuesday that DeepSeek, Moonshot, and four others extracted “capabilities worth billions” in this way since 2024, a method the agencies claimed let DeepSeek understate its $5.6 million training cost. China’s foreign affairs ministry said the country’s AI development “is a result of high-level scientific and technological self-reliance” and called the accusations “groundless.