They're standing on the shoulders of giants, not only in terms of re-using expensive computing power almost for free by using the outputs of expensive models. It's a bit of a tradition in that country, also in manufacturing.
What I meant to say was that OpenAI did put a lot of money into extracting value out of the pile of (partially copyrighted) data, and that DeepSeek was freeloading on that investment without disclosing it, making them look more efficient than they truly are.
