China has narrowed the AI development gap with the United States to just three months in some areas, because firms such as DeepSeek have worked out how to use chips and apply algorithms more efficiently, the CEO of Chinese startup 01.AI Lee Kai-fu said. Lee, a prominent figure in the global artificial intelligence space and a former head of Google China, told Reuters that startup DeepSeek revealed that China had pulled ahead in areas such as infrastructure software engineering DeepSeek shook the global AI industry when it launched an AI reasoning model in January that it said was trained with less advanced chips and was cheaper to develop than its Western rivals. The announcement challenged the assumption that U.S. sanctions were holding back China’s AI sector. “Previously I think it was a six to nine month gap and behind in everything. And now I think that’s probably three months behind in some of the core technologies, but actually ahead in some specific areas,” Lee said in an interview in Hong Kong.

Full report : DeepSeek Lee Kai-fu says that the startup aims to fill the China-US AI technological gap to three months.