DeepSeek buzz shows the game is not over for AI firms: Canadian tech leaders
Written by The Canadian Press on January 28, 2025
TORONTO — An artificial intelligence chatbot made by Chinese startup DeepSeek may have sent tech stocks plunging Monday and conjured up fears from rivals, but Canada’s AI leaders appear to have a much more optimistic take on the buzzy competitor.
They said Tuesday that technology firms in the country should see the AI assistant, which is said to perform as well as or even better than OpenAI’s ChatGPT and costs 95 per cent less to run, as proof that there is more room to innovate.
“The game is not over,” said Julien Billot, the CEO of Scale AI, a consortium of private firms, research centres, academics and startups in the AI space.
He says there’s an inclination to think the race is done because many U.S. AI firms had early success and have since invested billions into the technology.
Last week alone, OpenAI, SoftBank and Oracle announced a plan to invest up to US$500 billion in a new company called Stargate, which will aim to develop and expand AI infrastructure in the U.S.
DeepSeek’s advances amid this U.S. funding show more breakthroughs can happen and they don’t necessarily have to come from south of the border, Billot said.
“It’s very encouraging because it means money is not everything,” Billot said.
“Obviously, money is important, but … clever people can do something different with less money, and that’s something Canada can take inspiration from.”
Billot was hopeful Canada’s AI history and assets will create a great opportunity for companies in the country to disrupt the AI world next.
Among the promising Canadian firms he named was Cohere, a Toronto-based firm developing AI for enterprise use.
Asked about DeepSeek on Tuesday, Aidan Gomez, Cohere’s co-founder and CEO, said the future of AI is all about efficiency.
“It’s not about unlimited resources but about smart, efficient solutions,” he said in a statement.
“We’ve believed this for a long time, but it’s finally hitting home across the industry.”
Marc Low, director of innovation and emerging technology for consultancy firm KPMG in Canada, appeared to agree.
He predicted DeepSeek will hasten a deflationary trend in generative AI costs and make the technology more affordable and accessible for organizations of all sizes because it costs “mere pennies” to run a query with DeepSeek’s AI assistant.
“This could be good news for Canadian companies as the barriers to entry to utilize the technology drop even further,” Low said in a statement.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Jan. 28, 2025.
Tara Deschamps, The Canadian Press