DeepSeek shocked AI world this week. Here’s how tech CEOs responded

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella commented on its “real innovations.” OpenAI’s Sam Altman described it as “clearly a great model.” Apple CEO Tim Cook said “innovation that drives efficiency is a good thing.” And Palantir’s Alex Karp said it shows the importance of “an all-country effort.”

The tech CEOs were all talking about China’s DeepSeek, which burst out of obscurity and into the center of the tech universe this week. In the past few days, those execs and many of their peers have addressed questions about the startup lab’s new artificial intelligence model, which has stunned experts and was reportedly much more cost effective to create than competitive models in the U.S.

DeepSeek’s mobile app shot up to the top of the charts on Apple’s App Store early in the week and remained in the lead spot as of Friday, ahead of OpenAI’s ChatGPT. Reports that its new R1 model, which rivals OpenAI’s o1, cost just $6 million to create sent shares of chipmakers Nvidia and Broadcom down 17% on Monday, wiping out a combined $800 billion in market cap.

The timing was stark. DeepSeek’s rollout landed just as tech earnings season was about to begin, with Meta, Microsoft, Tesla and Apple all reporting between Wednesday and Thursday, and a week into President Donald Trump’s second term in office. Trump has emphasized the importance of the U.S. winning in AI, particularly against China, and in his first week back in the White House announced a project called Stargate that calls on OpenAI, Oracle and SoftBank to invest billions dollars to boost domestic AI infrastructure.

There’s been plenty of debate online about the significance of DeepSeek’s rollout and whether the financial achievement is real. A new report from research firm SemiAnalysis estimated DeepSeek’s costs at “well higher than $500M over the company history.”

But it was an inescapable topic this week across the industry. AI is every company’s focus right now, particularly in technology, where industry leaders are spending tens of billions of dollars building out data centers and buying advanced chips to develop more powerful models. For leaders of U.S. tech companies, the unifying aspect is the need to beat chief adversary China in the defining technology of the future.

“Technology is not inherently good,” and could pose threats in the wrong hands, Karp, the CEO of Palantir, told CNBC’s Sara Eisen in an interview that aired Friday. “We have to acknowledge that, but that also just means we have to run harder, run faster, have an all-country effort.”

Cook was asked by an analyst on Apple’s earnings call if the DeepSeek developments had changed his views on the company’s margins and the potential for computing costs to come down. Cook, whose company had just reported a record gross margin, offered a vague response.

“In general, I think innovation that drives efficiency is a good thing,” he said. “And, you know, that’s what you see in that model. Our tight integration of silicon and…