If the training costs are accurate, though, it means the model was developed at a fraction of the cost of rival models by OpenAI, Anthropic, Google and others.
Daniel Newman, CEO of tech insight firm The Futurum Group, said these developments suggest "a massive breakthrough," although he shed some doubt on the exact figures.
"I believe the breakthroughs of DeepSeek indicate a meaningful inflection for scaling laws and are a real necessity," he said. "Having said that, there are still a lot of questions and uncertainties around the full picture of costs as it pertains to the development of DeepSeek."