DeepSeek’s models are cheaper to run, but the real magic trick they pulled is that they showed how utterly replaceable a company like OpenAI (and by extension any Large Language Model company) really is. There really isn’t anything special about any of these companies anymore — they have no moat, their infrastructural advantage is moot, and their hordes of talent irrelevant.
What DeepSeek has proven isn’t just technological, but philosophical. It shows that the scrappy spirit of Silicon Valley builders is dead, replaced by a series of different management consultants that lead teams of engineers to do things based on vibes.
