Did DeepSeek turn down a government invite?
DeepSeek’s overnight success has not only reignited hope for China’s AI innovation, but also strengthened Beijing’s resolve to back its tech firms.
Zhejiang, DeepSeek’s home province, is taking action. On Thursday, Party Secretary Wang Hao hosted a tech policy symposium with local firms, including:
- Alibaba Cloud
- Humanoid robot startup Unitree Robotics
- EV startup Leapmotor
- Brain-computer interface startup BrainCo
But one name was missing: DeepSeek.
We find that odd. We can't imagine that Zhejiang officials didn’t invite DeepSeek, a company that is now a poster child for Chinese AI ingenuity.
- It's more likely that DeepSeek turned the invite down.
If so, the question is why. It may simply be because, with the exception of accepting some invites by national-level policymakers like Li Qiang and Xi Jinping, the company has been fairly low-key.
- It could also be because DeepSeek thinks, rightly so, there isn’t much meaningful help it can get from the Zhejiang government.
Our thoughts: DeepSeek’s biggest challenge, as founder Liang Wenfeng has noted, is access to computing power – and that is ultimately bottlenecked by China’s advanced chip production capacity.
- Drinking baijiu with local officials won’t fix that.