Tech companies and academics have long wrestled with the risks and rewards of building open source software. But the frenzy around generative artificial intelligence has lent new significance to the debate.

The artificial intelligence race has been dominated by proprietary models from OpenAI and Google, but a new challenger is shifting the landscape. DeepSeek’s latest AI model, R1, has bolstered the case for open-source AI,

Chinese startup DeepSeek has disrupted the AI industry with its low-cost, open-source model, prompting industry giants to reassess their approaches. Sega Cheng, AI expert, and iKala co-founder, emphasized the importance of reinforcement learning (RL) while noting ongoing debate over DeepSeek's actual GPU usage.