"DeepSeeks seems to have optimized heavily with clever software and hardware engineering to sort of neuter the speed limit meant to hold those chips back," Chorzempa said.
AI rivals will continue to do more with less
There are other aspects to the evolving AI race which show gaps that are narrowing for other reasons.
"The story is really about the gap being closed between open source and closed source models," said Alexandra Mousavizadeh, CEO of Evident, an AI consulting firm. "Now the open source models are getting much closer to the capabilities of the closed ones, and we see the price driving down to zero," Mousavizadeh said.