Li, who is also the founder and chairman of the Beijing-based electric vehicle manufacturer, acknowledged how a single meeting last September with Liang enlightened him about DeepSeek’s “best practices” and the importance of “fighting against some of the laziness of human nature, like taking short cuts”, according to a video posted on Wednesday by the firm on various social media.
“Anytime we want to go about changing and improving capabilities, the first step must be to do research,” Li said. “The second step is development. The third is to articulate the capability, while the fourth is to turn that capability into business value.”
That assessment reflects Liang’s efforts in leading DeepSeek’s ascent as a true innovator in AI, overshadowing larger technology companies and a bevy of start-ups in the fast-developing industry.
DeepSeek generated worldwide attention in late December 2024 and January by consecutively releasing two advanced open-source AI models, V3 and R1, which were built at a fraction of the cost and computing power that major tech companies typically require for developing large language models (LLMs) – the technology underpinning generative AI services like ChatGPT.
The open-source approach gives public access to a program’s source code, allowing third-party software developers to modify or share its design, fix broken links or scale up its capabilities. Open-source technologies have been a huge contributor to China’s tech industry over the past few decades.
