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How DeepSeek changed Silicon Valley’s AI landscape


Chinese AI lab DeepSeek provoked the first Silicon Valley freak-out of 2025. Here's what it could mean for American AI policy.

One of DeepSeek’s key innovations in creating its R1 model was “pure reinforcement learning,” a trial-and-error approach, according to Workera CEO and Stanford adjunct lecturer Kian Katanforoosh. Martin Casado, a general partner at Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), tells TechCrunch that DeepSeek proves just how “wrongheaded” the regulatory rationale of the last two years has been. “DeepSeek R1 is AI’s Sputnik moment,” said a16z co-founder Marc Andreessen in a post on X, referencing the launch of the Soviet Union’s Earth-orbiting spacecraft decades ago that pushed the U.S. to seriously invest in its space program.

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