According to a study in Nature, Chinese AI company Deepseek trained its R1 language model for only $294,000. The run used 512 Nvidia H800 chips developed specifically for the Chinese market. Nvidia confirmed the chips were delivered before U.S. export restrictions took effect. In its technical paper, Deepseek also admitted to using A100 GPUs during preparation for a smaller prototype, after U.S. officials had earlier suspected the company of holding unauthorized H100s.
The figure does not include the much larger costs of training Deepseek’s underlying V3 foundation model. Estimates for that project vary widely, ranging from tens of millions to several hundred million dollars depending on the source.
Deepseek’s claim of unusually low training costs previously rattled global tech markets, triggering sharp declines in the share prices of major AI hardware and software companies.
