# The story behind DeepSeek’s breakthrough

An episode of [The Story of Money](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1376303362), 19 Feb 2025, 18 min.

Audio: https://sphinx.acast.com/p/acast/s/behindthemoney/e/67b506915033e3e15ac1bb1b/media.mp3

This January, DeepSeek made an announcement that changed the artificial intelligence landscape. The Chinese start-up said that it had trained the latest in a series of competitive AI models, which appeared to be built much more cheaply than those of Silicon Valley competitors. The FT’s China technology correspondent, Eleanor Olcott, first wrote a story about the company last summer. She’s on today to discuss how DeepSeek’s founder Liang Wenfeng was able to finance and grow his company at a time when start-up funding is scarce in China, and often comes with too many strings attached. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - For further reading: Liang Wenfeng, the DeepSeek founder panicking the tech world The global AI race: is China catching up to the US? Xi Jinping seizes DeepSeek moment to restore China tech chiefs to spotlight - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Follow Eleanor Olcott on X (@EleanorOlcott). Michela Tindera is on X (@mtindera07) and Bluesky (@mtindera.ft.com), or follow her on LinkedIn for updates about the show and more. Read a transcript of this episode on FT.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Shows are listed from Apple Podcasts' charts and directory, and Podcast Index where it is used. Every show and episode belongs to its publisher and plays from the publisher's own feed; this site hosts none of them.