A Chinese AI startup took the world and AI experts by surprise after it claimed to have built an immensely popular chatbot at a fraction of the cost of those created by tech giants in the US. At a supposed training cost of just $6 million, the DeepSeek R1 outperformed some of the leading AI models. Amid these, internet sleuths have unearthed an old video of Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI – a company that ignited the artificial intelligence revolution. In the old video, he states that AI startups with a $10 million budget are “totally hopeless”.

The old video from 2023 shows Sam Altman attending an event in India where he was asked, “How is a small, smart team with a budget of $10 million could build something substantial within AI?” He replied, “It’s totally hopeless to compete with us on training foundation models.”

Also Read: China’s DeepSeek refuses to answer questions on Arunachal Pradesh, NE Indian states: ‘Let’s talk about something else’

Entrepreneur Arnaud Bertrand reshared the video. “This is pretty hilarious in retrospect. In India in 2023, Altman was asked how if a small, smart team with a budget of $10 million could build something substantial within AI,” he wrote, adding Altman’s response from the event.

What did social media say?

The post prompted a flurry of responses from people. An individual posted, “Things would make sense if he added within two years.” Another added, “Funny how ‘totally hopeless’ turned into real competition in just over a year. The AI space is moving fast—centralized control is breaking down, but the question remains: who gets to define the future of AI governance?”

A third expressed, “Classic non-techie answer.” A fourth wrote, “Actually, people like Sam Altman are responsible for creating artificial scarcity in the field of AI. Had OpenAI been an open-source organization, DeepSeek moment would have occurred much earlier.”

Also Read: 10 superintelligent memes on DeepSeek vs OpenAI (including Elon Musk’s favourite)

Sam Altman on DeepSeek:

In an X post, the CEO wrote, “Deepseek’s r1 is an impressive model, particularly around what they’re able to deliver for the price. We will obviously deliver much better models and also it’s legit invigorating to have a new competitor! we will pull up some releases.”

“But mostly we are excited to continue to execute on our research roadmap and believe more compute is more important now than ever before to succeed at our mission. The world is going to want to use a LOT of AI, and really be quite amazed by the next gen models coming,” he added.