In 2023, OpenAI’s CEO Sam Altman visited India and made a bold assertion. When asked whether a small team with just $10 million could build something substantial in AI, his response was definitive: “It’s totally hopeless to compete with us on training foundation models."

Two years later, that claim has aged poorly.

The belief that only deep-pocketed Silicon Valley giants could develop large language models (LLMs) has been shattered. Enter China, which has proven that AI development doesn’t have to cost billions. While OpenAI reportedly spent over $100 million training its latest model, a Chinese company, DeepSeek, pulled off a remarkable feat—training an open-source LLM for just $5.6 million.

The ripple effect was immediate. Tech stocks took a beating: Nvidia and Broadcom plunged by 17 per cent, Alphabet fell by 4 per cent, and Microsoft dropped by 2 per cent. Over $1 trillion in market value was wiped out, with Nvidia alone suffering a staggering $589 billion loss in market capitalisation. This wasn’t just a financial shock—it was a geopolitical one. Despite aggressive US restrictions on chip exports, China made a grand entrance onto the AI stage, proving that necessity is indeed the........

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