Instruction Manual: DeepSeek’s innovative breakthroughs and choice between open versus closed-source

DeepSeek was an AI startup founded in 2023 in Hangzhou, China. The company was fully funded by a hedge fund, HighFlyer, whose co-founder and CEO, Wenfeng Liang, also served as DeepSeek’s CEO. The company aimed to develop large language models (LLMs) and ultimately to build Artificial General Intelligence (AGI). Due to US sanctions and embargo on advanced hardware exports to China, however, DeepSeek had to invent novel algorithms and model structures to develop stronger model capability with limited hardware resources. As such, the key to success for DeepSeek was to develop potentially game-changing architectural and algorithmic innovations. On December 26,...