- Mark Zuckerberg says it’s too soon to gauge DeepSeek’s impact on Meta’s AI spending.
- DeepSeek, a Chinese AI startup, says it can build powerful models at a fraction of US costs.
- Zuckerberg calls for an open-source AI standard that is “American.”
Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Meta, says it’s too soon to tell what kind of impact DeepSeek will have on the company’s AI spending.
During Meta’s earnings call on Wednesday, Zuckerberg was asked by an analyst how DeepSeek — the Chinese AI startup that sent Silicon Valley into a tailspin by building powerful models at a reported fraction of the cost — will impact Meta’s own investments in AI.
“They have advances that we will hope to implement in our systems, and that’s part of the nature of how this works, whether it’s a Chinese competitor or not,” Zuckerberg said, adding DeepSeek had done “a number of novel things” that Meta is “still digesting.”
But he said that probably won’t change how Meta is investing in AI, at least for now.
“It’s probably too early to really have a strong opinion on what this means for the trajectory around infrastructure and capex and things like that,” Zuckerberg said.
Zuck says major AI infrastructure will still be needed
Meta and other US tech companies have recently faced questions on when their heavy investments on AI would start paying off. That scrutiny hit new levels this month when DeepSeek said it trained its AI models for a fraction of the cost that its US rivals spent, causing some tech stocks to tumble.
Last week, Zuckerberg said Meta planned to spend between $60 billion to $65 billion in capital investments in 2025.
During the earnings call on Wednesday, he defended those investments, saying that while the use of Meta’s AI computing infrastructure could change, the need for it will not disappear.
“If anything, some of the recent news has only strengthened our conviction that this is the right thing for us to be focused on,” he said, adding: “At this point, I would bet that the ability to build out that kind of infrastructure is going to be a major advantage for both the quality of the service and being able to serve the scale that we want to.”
Open source, but American
On the earnings call, Zuckerberg also reaffirmed his commitment to open-source AI with a notable caveat: It should follow American standards.
“There’s going to be an open-source standard globally, and I think for our own national advantage, it’s important that it’s an American standard,” Zuckerberg said. “We take that seriously, and we want to build the AI system that people around the world are using.”
Earlier in the call, he highlighted a shift in the relationship between Big Tech and Washington, pointing to a more supportive US administration that backs American companies in the global AI race.
“We now have a US administration that is proud of our leading companies, prioritizes American technology winning, and that will defend our values and interests abroad,” he said. “I am optimistic about the progress and innovation that this can unlock.”
Yann LeCun, Meta’s chief AI scientist, previously said that the lesson to take away from DeepSeek’s success wasn’t that China’s AI is “surpassing the US,” but rather that “open source models are surpassing proprietary ones.”
