CEO of Google’s parent company Alphabet, Sundar Pichai, has finally had his say on DeepSeek. The Chinese AI startup made a massive impact on the AI industry (and the stock market) when it released its R1 model recently and caused somewhat of a panic among some of the big US-based artificial intelligence companies. DeepSeek claims to train its AI models at a fraction of the cost of the competition with cheaper hardware.

That has calmed down a little bit by now, but some experts are saying that DeepSeek is a big deal and could bring “the end of closed-source AI”. Companies like Nvidia remain positive considering the startup is using a massive amount of its GPUs for training its AI models.

Sundar Pichai says the DeepSeek team is “tremendous”

Gemini (formerly Bard) is Google’s answer to the AI chatbot craze and you’ll find it integrated into its range of Pixel products. In a recent earnings call, as reported by TechCrunch, Pichai revealed that it hopes the increasingly cheaper cost of production will boost growth rather than stunt it.

“First of all, you know, I think it's [DeepSeek] a tremendous team. I think they've done very, very good work.”

“Part of the reason we are so excited about the AI opportunity is we know we can drive extraordinary use cases because the cost of actually using it is going to keep coming down, which will make more use cases feasible. And that's the opportunity space. It's as big as it comes, and that's why you're seeing us invest to meet that moment.”

Sundar Pichai, Alphabet & Google CEO

Alphabet has already announced that it will boost capital expenditures to $75 billion this year; that’s a massive 42% spending increase. It’s showing no plans to slow down its AI business. Commenting on Gemini’s flash models, Pichai says that they are “some of the most efficient models out there including comparing to DeepSeek's V3 and R1”. As efficiency improves, cheaper production will only give it more opportunity to grow.

So, while DeepSeek may have been a scare for some AI investors, big US companies aren’t backing down.

About the Author

Jack Goodall

At PC Guide, Jack is mostly responsible for reporting on hardware deals. He also specializes in monitors, TVs, and headsets and can be found putting his findings together in a review or best-of guide.