Democratization by DeepSeek

In the good ole days, a business paradigm would last for ages till a new disruptor came on the horizon. Even then the industry would be quite slow to adopt, taking years. Some would even get away for decades!

With the advent of technology and its growing influence on our lives, cycles are painfully becoming shorter. One played out recently. While the concept of AI had been around for ages, it was only the advent of ChatGPT in 2022 that we genuinely entered the AI era. That brought in some business changes. The way Windows + Intel became Wintel. Three companies came together to give us the new AI paradigm: OpenAI + Nvidia + Microsoft. All three companies flourished. OpenAI from nowhere was valued at hundreds of billions. Microsoft stayed steady hovering around the $3 trillion mark. Nvidia came out of nowhere and had one of the greatest bull runs of all time leaving both Microsoft and Apple way behind. That seemed to be the way forward. Big bucks and big datasets would take the AI era forward. That’s what it looked like in 2023 and 2024. It was all about trillions and billions.

The moment 2025 dawned, everything went out of the window. DeepSeek took a totally different route and matched the likes of ChatGPT for a mere $6 million or so. It shattered the arrogance of Sam Altman who in India had boldly said: AI startups with a $10 million budget are totally hopeless! But it was millions beating trillions and billions. In fact, the only “trillion” thing was the global stock market losing that kind of money in dollars. Nvidia initially lost half a trillion.

The market was turned on its head yet again in a very short time. Now it is theoretically possible for thousands of startups all over the world with a $10 million budget each to emulate DeepSeek and better ChatGPT. Who knows what era will be unleashed if that actually happens! What new genies will come out of the bottle? What will happen to the tech giants with war kitties of billions of dollars? “Democratization of technology” is getting more and more grassroot.

Opportunity for India

Here lies the lesson for India. It’s not all about money. It’s about the talent pool. It’s about the ideas. Indian startups have to think out of the box, and they can really achieve anything they set to. I keep telling everyone that India’s greatest tech product is UPI. That’s something enabled by the Government of India. It is high time that Indian IT giants and startups come out with a product that betters the legend of UPI, especially in the AI space.