How DeepSeek changed the market's mind

Planet Money

NPR

Business, News

4.6 • 29.8K Ratings

🗓️ 1 February 2025

⏱️ 31 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

On Monday, the stock market went into a tizzy over a new AI model from Chinese company DeepSeek. It seemed to be just as powerful as many of its American competitors, but its makers claimed to have made it far more cheaply, using far less computing power than similar AI apps like ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini. In one day, hundreds of billions of dollars were wiped off the valuations of companies related to AI.

This week, investors seemed suddenly to change their minds about what our AI future would look like and which companies will (or won't) profit from it. Will we really need all those high-end computer chips, after all? What about power plants to provide electricity for all the energy-hungry AI data centers?

On today's show – how DeepSeek might have changed the economics of artificial intelligence forever.

This episode was produced by Willa Rubin with an assist from James Sneed. It was edited by Keith Romer and engineered by Neil Tevault. Research help from Sierra Juarez. Alex Goldmark is Planet Money's executive producer.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Public media counts on your support to ensure that the reporting and programs you depend on thrive.
0:06.7	Make a recurring donation today to get special access to more than 20 NPR podcasts, perks like sponsor-free listening, bonus episodes, early access, and more.
0:17.3	So start supporting what you love today at plus.npr.org.
0:24.5	Just a note in this episode, we will at some point talk about specific AI and tech companies
0:29.7	including meta, Google, Microsoft, and Anthropic, all of which are current financial
0:35.2	supporters of NPR.
0:37.2	Here's the show. This is financial supporters of NPR. Here's the show.
0:39.1	This is Planet Money from NPR.
0:44.5	Imagine us at Planet Money rolling out of bed, late on Monday morning, still in our cozy pajamas.
0:52.1	Yeah, we got our teenage mutant ninja turtle slippers on.
0:55.6	We got our cup of coffee.
0:57.0	Big Yon, turn on the old TV, and oh my, what is happening in the stock market right now?
1:04.1	This is moving so fast.
1:05.4	It's stunning.
1:06.2	I mean, wow.
1:07.2	It is shaking this entire industry to its core.
1:11.0	Crush the NASDAQ, which planned 3.07%.
1:14.0	Uh, yeah.
1:15.7	A single largest loss in a day of market capitalization in history.
1:21.2	What was happening? It was apparently some kind of AI apocalypse?
1:26.0	Okay, so AI apocalypse, not so sure about that.
1:29.7	Okay, fine, whatever.
	...

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