411–420 of 586 posts
China may be subsidizing this for now in a way that US companies can't or won't - but if they keep building power infrastructure and the US doesn't, then it will no longer require subsidy from them. It will simply be absolutely cheaper (including profit margin) to serve tokens in China. China is building for the future, while Western Democracies are afraid of the future, and of their own shadow.
China may be subsidizing this for now in a way that US companies can't or won't - but if they keep building power infrastructure and the US doesn't, then it will no longer require subsidy from them. It will simply be absolutely cheaper (including profit margin) to serve tokens in China. China is building for the future, while Western Democracies are afraid of the future, and of their own shadow.
It feels like the US for years has operated under the assumption that homeostasis for the global economy would always be “designed in California, assembled in China.” Like there was something in the American DNA that was lacking in China and innovation would always need to happen here. But China it seems doesn’t need the US to produce great cars, devices, robotics, or AI. We absolutely need China to help us build all…
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It feels like the US for years has operated under the assumption that homeostasis for the global economy would always be “designed in California, assembled in China.” Like there was something in the American DNA that was lacking in China and innovation would always need to happen here. But China it seems doesn’t need the US to produce great cars, devices, robotics, or AI. We absolutely need China to help us build all…
Propaganda. We americans ate that shit up. There's nothing special about anything we design in the US other than time and money commitment to create it. China did have some espionage of course going on, but the vast majority of shit isn't some secret. And with the US shitting on China with restrictions, we increasingly caused them to invest time and money into things they otherwise would have passively accepted as co…
It’s wild. Regardless of Deepseek direct pricing, on Openrouter itself, the pricing for Pro is comparable to Haiku. Flash is even cheaper. You get Opus 4.5 and better than Sonnet 4.6 performance.
China may be subsidizing this for now in a way that US companies can't or won't - but if they keep building power infrastructure and the US doesn't, then it will no longer require subsidy from them. It will simply be absolutely cheaper (including profit margin) to serve tokens in China. China is building for the future, while Western Democracies are afraid of the future, and of their own shadow.
Selling under price to capture market was American playbook for last 20 or more years.
Amusing that just when the big three AI providers from US raise prices significantly, even for the mini models, you’ve got a Chinese model slashing their already-cheap offer by 75%. Not to mention you can run this model on your own hardware, although admittedly even the flash stretches the meaning of local for individual people.
The US providers are at capacity limits and are increasing pricing as demand increases.
The Chinese providers are relatively unknown and not even allowed for a lot of applications. They have to cut the price just to be attractive.
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Might be more far to say: they needed the US until they caught up. The massive straight up IP theft helps a lot here. Though theft might be too strong since a lot of companies knew what they were getting in to
Wait until you hear about the history of US industrialization. This trope of 'they stole our ideas' needs to fade away, it's a coping mechanism based on the assumption of inherent superiority of American society rather than the natural wax and wane of civilizations due to varying structural factors.
It plays this way: you're behind, you ignore IP rules. You're ahead: you create them to defend your newly-gained status.
Also please no moralizing here on IP when the entire OpenAI/Anthropic playbook has been "massive straight up IP theft". The irony.
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I'm not sure how much of it is subsidies. If the open weight models are anything to judge by, China is taking price performance seriously, and the US model vendors are looking for performance at any cost. Like any other Pareto optimization, we end up paying 10x more for the last few percent improvement on benchmark scores. Of course, like literally every other time this has played out in computing history, the compan…
> Of course, like literally every other time this has played out in computing history, the companies focused on price performance will end up with more economic resources, and get to turn the upgrade crank more often and for longer. The iphone is the best selling computing device in history and is among the most expensive in its category.
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Cheap power at what cost for our planet? Not long ago we were crying death to bitcoin, it’s going to destroy the planet. Come AI, with unlimited power demand. Everybody screaming we need more power. We need infrastructure, clean energy, even nuclear. We are doing all in the wrong order.
China added 315GW of solar in 2025. For context, EU added 65 and US 43. In one year, China _added_ almost the total capacity EU has. China is the one place where AI actually can use clean energy…
- 70% nuclear
- 26% renewables
- 4% gas/coal