Before DeepSeek shook up the tech world and put Chinese artificial intelligence on the map, Wu Chenglin’s own startup had nearly folded three times — but in the past year it has raised US$30 million.
The release in January last year of a low-cost generative AI model from DeepSeek that performed at a similar level to ChatGPT and other top American chatbots upended assumptions of US dominance in the sensitive sector.
The breakthrough has galvanized China’s AI scene, despite hurdles posed by rivalry with the US, and fears of a global market bubble.
Photo: AFP
“It gave a lot of people confidence” that China’s AI community previously lacked, Wu said.
His venture DeepWisdom, whose flagship product is a platform for AI-powered software development, had struggled to stay afloat despite its popularity among programmers.
But as excitement around DeepSeek fueled a boom in spending, Wu raised 220 million yuan in two funding rounds.
Photo: AFP
Meanwhile, Shi Yaqiong and her team at Beijing-based Jinqiu Capital have closed deals with more than 50 AI firms over the past 12 months.
Shi, the fund’s vice-president, described a “clear surge” in enthusiasm around Chinese AI and competition among investors since the DeepSeek shock.
“The kind of projects with an initial valuation in 2024 of US$10-20 million were, in 2025, expected to have initial valuations around US$20-40 million,” she said.
Photo: AFP
ENGINEER DIVIDEND
Shares in two leading Chinese AI startups, Zhipu AI and MiniMax, soared on their market debuts in Hong Kong this month.
Frenzy over the much-hyped potential of AI to change the world is driving global stocks to record highs, led by chipmakers and tech giants.
But the big-spending euphoria has sparked fears of a market crash, with many investors hyper-focused on any sign the AI bubble could burst, and questioning when new companies will become profitable.
Access to top-end chips made by US giant Nvidia is also restricted in China under White House policies designed to curb China’s technological development.
But that hasn’t dampened the spirits of young developers in the world’s second largest economy.
At an AI networking event held on a brisk winter afternoon last week in a stylish Beijing cafe, animated discussion filled the air about the future of the fast-moving industry.
Chip export controls mean Chinese AI is more likely to be “open-source and cheap” which could make it more useful to society, said one participant, entrepreneur Li Weijia.
China is often said to enjoy an “engineer dividend” that benefits its AI sector, and talent is flocking to the field.
Online hiring platform Zhilian Zhaopin reported a 39 percent increase in applications to AI-related jobs in the first three quarters of last year, after DeepSeek’s breakout.
‘COST EFFICIENT’
“China has a huge application developer ecosystem and people are very good at building apps,” said Shen Qiajin, founder of ideaFlow.
“But for a very long time, we didn’t have a good cost-efficient model,” he said.
That is a gap DeepSeek has now filled.
The firm began in 2023 as a side project of a data-driven hedge fund co-founded in the tech hub Hangzhou by Liang Wenfeng, which had access to a cache of powerful Nvidia processors.
Today, the company — expected to release its next AI model within weeks — holds four percent of global market share for chatbots, according to Web traffic analysis company Similarweb.
ChatGPT dominates at 68 percent while Google’s Gemini is catching up at 18 percent, Similarweb estimates.
DeepSeek’s decision to make its systems’ inner workings public, in contrast to the closed AI models sold by OpenAI and other Western rivals, has boosted adoption of its tools by developers and businesses, Neil Shah at Counterpoint Research said.
Its tools have had “strong adoption in cost-sensitive emerging markets,” he said.
But in the West users are more cautious, “primarily on account of privacy and national security concerns.”
Even so, the domestic market is huge. By June last year, more than half a billion Chinese Internet users reported having used generative AI products, according to the China Internet Network Information Center.
Entrepreneur Yang Yiwen said her parents had their first meaningful encounter with AI during last year’s Chinese New Year, when they watched her use DeepSeek to plan a family trip.
“They found it quite fun,” she said.
If one asks Taiwanese why house prices are so high or why the nation is so built up or why certain policies cannot be carried out, one common answer is that “Taiwan is too small.” This is actually true, though not in the way people think. The National Property Administration (NPA), responsible for tracking and managing the government’s real estate assets, maintains statistics on how much land the government owns. As of the end of last year, land for official use constituted 293,655 hectares, for public use 1,732,513 hectares, for non-public use 216,972 hectares and for state enterprises 34 hectares, yielding
The small platform at Duoliang Train Station in Taitung County’s Taimali Township (太麻里) served villagers from 1992 to 2006, but was eventually shut down due to lack of use. Just 10 years later, the abandoned train station had become widely known as the most beautiful station in Taiwan, and visitors were so frequent that the village had to start restricting traffic. Nowadays, Duoliang Village (多良) is known as a bit of a tourist trap, with a mandatory, albeit modest, admission fee of NT$10 giving access to a crowded lane of vendors with a mediocre view of the ocean and the trains
Traditionally, indigenous people in Taiwan’s mountains practice swidden cultivation, or “slash and burn” agriculture, a practice common in human history. According to a 2016 research article in the International Journal of Environmental Sustainability, among the Atayal people, this began with a search for suitable forested slopeland. The trees are burnt for fertilizer and the land cleared of stones. The stones and wood are then piled up to make fences, while both dead and standing trees are retained on the plot. The fences are used to grow climbing crops like squash and beans. The plot itself supports farming for three years.
President William Lai (賴清德) on Nov. 25 last year announced in a Washington Post op-ed that “my government will introduce a historic US$40 billion supplementary defense budget, an investment that underscores our commitment to defending Taiwan’s democracy.” Lai promised “significant new arms acquisitions from the United States” and to “invest in cutting-edge technologies and expand Taiwan’s defense industrial base,” to “bolster deterrence by inserting greater costs and uncertainties into Beijing’s decision-making on the use of force.” Announcing it in the Washington Post was a strategic gamble, both geopolitically and domestically, with Taiwan’s international credibility at stake. But Lai’s message was exactly
RSS