The biggest revelation from DeepSeek is that open-source has won
24 March 2025 (CNBC). Kai-Fu Lee, AI scholar and entrepreneur whose Chinese startup 01.AI has built an LLM platform for enterprises using DeepSeek, commented on DeepSeek's impact on open-source AI in a social media post reported by CNBC in March 2025.
China's open-source embrace upends conventional wisdom around artificial intelligence
More from Kai-Fu Lee · AI and money · AI and culture · 2025
Who else?
What it refers to: DeepSeek's R1 model, free under an MIT License, whose success pushed Chinese firms such as Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent toward open-sourcing their own models.
Other voices
- “On the wrong side of history” Sam Altman, Builder,
- “Open sourcing improves our models” Mark Zuckerberg, Builder,
- “China should gradually become a contributor instead of freeriding” Liang Wenfeng,
- “The market reactions to DeepSeek are woefully unjustified” Yann LeCun, Researcher,
- “Stop open source and concentrate enormous technological and economic power with Anthropic” Chamath Palihapitiya,
- “There'll be an open-source ChatGPT within 6 months, surely” Nathan Lambert, Writer,










