Nvidia has since come out and said that the GPUs that DeepSeek used were fully export-compliant.
The real deal or not?
Industry experts seem to broadly agree that what DeepSeek has achieved is impressive, although some have urged skepticism over some of the Chinese company's claims.
"DeepSeek is legitimately impressive, but the level of hysteria is an indictment of so many," U.S. entrepreneur Palmer Luckey, who founded Oculus and Anduril wrote on X.
"The $5M number is bogus. It is pushed by a Chinese hedge fund to slow investment in American AI startups, service their own shorts against American titans like Nvidia, and hide sanction evasion."