Mark Zuckerberg has long championed Meta’s open-source approach to artificial intelligence software — which lets other companies access and build on top of its technology — saying that having an American model as the underpinning of new products was key to ensuring U.S. dominance over China in AI.
Now the emergence of DeepSeek, a state-of-the-art AI model from China, is pressure-testing Zuckerberg’s strategy and threatening the home-grown advantage for the U.S. The Chinese startup says its technology uses a fraction of the cost and computing power of its American rivals, and it’s offering an open-source alternative to Meta’s Llama and other made-in-the-USA models.
Despite hesitations about its connections to China, in an appearance on Joe Rogan’s podcast in early January the Meta CEO lauded DeepSeek as a "very advanced model” that was "doing really good work.” That sentiment has been echoed this week by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, who said it’s "invigorating to have a new competitor,” and U.S. President Donald Trump, who said on Monday that he views DeepSeek’s faster, less-expensive methods "as a positive, as an asset.”
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