DeepSeek, the Chinese artificial intelligence (AI) developer, reported on Wednesday that it had spent just $294,000 to train its R1 AI model.
The cost estimate, which was revealed for the first time, was published in a peer-reviewed article in the academic journal Nature.
The paper stated that DeepSeek used 512 Nvidia H800 chips to train the reasoning-focused model over a period of 80 hours.
The H800 chips used by DeepSeek were designed by Nvidia for the Chinese market.
In supplementary information accompanying the paper, DeepSeek admitted for the first time that it owns A100 chips, which were banned for export to China by the US in October 2022.
In 2023, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman indicated that "foundational model training" at his company cost "much more" than $100 million but has not provided detailed figures.