Google AI chief says DeepSeek’s cost claims are ‘exaggerated’

The notion that China’s DeepSeek spent under $6 million to develop its artificial intelligence system is “exaggerated and a little bit misleading,” according Google DeepMind boss Demis Hassabis.

Last month, DeepSeek shocked the world by releasing a popular chatbot and AI model using far less money than US rivals, such as DeepMind and OpenAI. Hassabis, who runs the AI unit of Alphabet’s Google, told Bloomberg Television that DeepSeek “seems to have only reported the cost of the final training round, which is a fraction of the total cost.”

The executive also shot down the idea that DeepSeek’s emergence upends the economics of AI development. “We don’t see any new silver bullet technologies,” Hassabis said on Monday, in Paris, at the Artificial Intelligence Action Summit. “DeepSeek is not an outlier on the efficiency curve.”

The Chinese startup reported spending US$5.6 million (HK$43.68 million) on computing costs to train its model using older Nvidia chips. Several researchers have questioned those claims. US authorities opened a probe to see if DeepSeek circumvented a chip ban by purchasing through Singapore.