#459 – DeepSeek, China, OpenAI, NVIDIA, xAI, TSMC, Stargate, and AI Megaclusters

Dylan Patel is the founder of SemiAnalysis, a research & analysis company specializing in semiconductors, GPUs, CPUs, and AI hardware. Nathan Lambert is a research scientist at the Allen Institute for AI (Ai2) and the author of a blog on AI called Interconnects. Thank you for listening ❤ Check out our sponsors: https://lexfridman.com/sponsors/ep459-sc See below for timestamps, transcript, and to give feedback, submit questions, contact Lex, etc. Transcript: https://lexfridman.com/deepseek-dylan-patel-nathan-lambert-transcript CONTACT LEX: Feedback – give feedback to Lex: https://lexfridman.com/survey AMA – submit questions, videos or call-in: https://lexfridman.com/ama Hiring – join our team: https://lexfridman.com/hiring Other – other ways to get in touch: https://lexfridman.com/contact EPISODE LINKS: Dylan’s X: https://x.com/dylan522p SemiAnalysis: https://semianalysis.com/ Nathan’s X: https://x.com/natolambert Nathan’s Blog: https://www.interconnects.ai/ Nathan’s Podcast: https://www.interconnects.ai/podcast Nathan’s Website: https://www.natolambert.com/ Nathan’s YouTube: https://youtube.com/@natolambert Nathan’s Book: https://rlhfbook.com/ SPONSORS: To support this podcast, check out our sponsors & get discounts: Invideo AI: AI video generator. Go to https://invideo.io/i/lexpod GitHub: Developer platform and AI code editor. Go to https://gh.io/copilot Shopify: Sell stuff online. Go to https://shopify.com/lex NetSuite: Business management software. Go to http://netsuite.com/lex AG1: All-in-one daily nutrition drinks. Go to https://drinkag1.com/lex OUTLINE: (00:00) – Introduction (13:28) – DeepSeek-R1 and DeepSeek-V3 (35:02) – Low cost of training (1:01:19) – DeepSeek compute cluster (1:08:52) – Export controls on GPUs to China (1:19:10) – AGI timeline (1:28:35) – China’s manufacturing capacity (1:36:30) – Cold war with China (1:41:00) – TSMC and Taiwan (2:04:38) – Best GPUs for AI (2:19:30) – Why DeepSeek is so cheap (2:32:49) – Espionage (2:41:52) – Censorship (2:54:46) – Andrej Karpathy and magic of RL (3:05:17) – OpenAI o3-mini vs DeepSeek r1 (3:24:25) – NVIDIA (3:28:53) – GPU smuggling (3:35:30) – DeepSeek training on OpenAI data (3:45:59) – AI megaclusters (4:21:21) – Who wins the race to AGI? (4:31:34) – AI agents (4:40:16) – Programming and AI (4:47:43) – Open source (4:56:55) – Stargate (5:04:24) – Future of AI