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Comment by wallaBBB | Hacker News Reader

One thing I (intuitively) don't doubt - that they spent less money for developing R1 than OpenAI spent on marketing, lobbying and management compensation.

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What makes you say that? Do you think Chinese top tier talent is cheap?

I'm sure the salaries at Deepseek in China were lower than the salaries at OpenAI.

How are you sure about that?

A qualified guess. Do you have something that indicates dev salaries are lower in US vs China?

One example is that I've received offers to work in big tech in China at or exceeding my FAANG compensation here in the Bay Area. I have other reasons to believe as well but I can't talk about that in public.

Definitely cheaper than American top tier talent

How much cheaper? I’m curious because I’ve seen the offers that Chinese tech companies pay and it’s in the millions for the top talent.

What is cheap? But compared to the US, yes. Almost everywhere talent is 'cheap' compared to the US unless they move to the US.

How experienced are you with Chinese AI talent compensation?

I did not refer to the talent directly contributing to the technical progress.

P.S. - clarification: I mean not referring to talent at OpenAI. And yes I have very little doubt talent at DeepSeek is a lot cheaper than the things I listed above for OpenAI. I would be interested in a breakdown of the cost of OpenAI and seeing if even their technical talent costs more than the things I mentioned.

Do you think 1.5M a year compensation is cheap? That’s in the range of OpenAI offers.

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