alt Hacker NewsIt would seem strange, if they were operating in the same economy, but they don't. DeepSeek operates in an economy with a high degree of central planning.
China subsidizes strategic industries, and they have heavily done so with AI. And DeepSeek specifically has said they have no commercialization plans.
For example: https://www.boc.cn/aboutboc/bi1/202501/t20250123_25254674.ht...
DeepSeek is not the only provider of inference for their models. Chinese subsidies likely do explain DeepSeek's ability to provide inference cheaper than other providers, but even a US provider like DeepInfra can serve DeepSeek 4 Pro at $1.30/M in and $2.60/M out. Unless American labs are doing something wildly inefficient, it feels safe to assume Anthropic has some profit margin on inference at API prices.