I did not refer to the talent directly contributing to the technical progress.

P.S. - clarification: I mean not referring to talent at OpenAI. And yes I have very little doubt talent at DeepSeek is a lot cheaper than the things I listed above for OpenAI. I would be interested in a breakdown of the cost of OpenAI and seeing if even their technical talent costs more than the things I mentioned.

What is cheap? But compared to the US, yes. Almost everywhere talent is 'cheap' compared to the US unless they move to the US.

I'm sure the salaries at Deepseek in China were lower than the salaries at OpenAI.

Definitely cheaper than American top tier talent