Sam Altman admits China’s DeepSeek forced OpenAI’s hand on open models

Earlier this month, OpenAI made headlines by unveiling its first models with open weights since the release of GPT-2. This strategic move promises to deliver robust performance at a fraction of the cost. The impetus behind this decision was significantly influenced by the emergence of China's DeepSeek, which disrupted the AI landscape with its open-source offerings. OpenAI's CEO, Sam Altman, emphasized the importance of being on the right side of history in a recent interview with CNBC, acknowledging that competition from DeepSeek and similar Chinese models contributed to their choice to release open-weight models. Altman candidly remarked, "It was clear that if we didn't do it, the world was going to be predominantly built on Chinese open-source models." He clarified that while this was a major factor, it wasn't the only consideration. Additionally, Altman addressed the U.S. policy of limiting semiconductor exports to China, expressing skepticism about its effectiveness. He stated, "You can export-control one thing, but maybe not the right thing… maybe people build fabs or find other workarounds." DeepSeek is not alone in this competitive arena; various other Chinese companies have gained traction through their open-weight models. For instance, Alibaba has been releasing its Qwen foundation models under the Apache 2.0 license, while Meta has integrated its Llama models into its social media platforms under community licenses. The rise of DeepSeek's AI solutions has challenged the perception of American dominance in the AI sector, as their chatbot has demonstrated performance levels comparable to those of OpenAI and Google, all while being developed at a significantly lower cost. Simultaneously, OpenAI has introduced its latest GPT-5 model this month, boasting enhancements in accuracy, reasoning, coding, health, writing, and multi-modal capabilities. This new model has resulted in older GPT and o series models being deprecated for free users, although Pro, Plus, Team, and Enterprise users will still have access to the previous versions.