Aarian Marshall
This week, some auto industry observers felt a creeping sense of déjà vu. Seemingly out of nowhere, a Chinese firm made international headlines by besting Western companies at the tech they supposedly invented.
No, it wasn’t BYD, the 20-year-old automaker that gained sudden global recognition in recent years as it began to export low-price electric vehicles all over the world. (BYD built more electric vehicles in 2024 than Tesla.) This week’s buzz was about DeepSeek, a Chinese startup that shocked techies when it released a new open-source artificial intelligence model with seemingly a fraction of the funding US competitors have hoovered up to build their own. DeepSeek’s success saw US tech stocks slide earlier this week, and investors scramble to reexamine their bets.
In some ways, experts say, the startup’s success follows the auto industry’s playbook. And the lesson was similar: Chinese firms can still build it better and more cheaply. “There is an underestimation of Chinese innovation and ingenuity,” says Ilaria Mazzocco, a senior fellow researching Chinese policy at the nonprofit Center for Strategic and International Studies. “There is resourcefulness even when there may not be access to the best technology.”
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