story
This is a great example of how a misleading narrative can take hold and dominate discussion even when it's fundamentally incorrect.
SemiAnalysis documents that DeepSeek has spent well over $500M on GPUs alone, with total infrastructure costs around $2.5B when including operating costs[0].
The more-interesting question is probably why do people keep repeating this? Why do they want it to be true so badly?
[0]: https://semianalysis.com/2025/01/31/deepseek-debates/#:~:tex...