Durov Explains the Key Reasons Behind DeepSeek’s Success

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In his Chinese New Year message, Telegram founder Pavel Durov highlighted the success of DeepSeek AI and explained why China has made such a breakthrough.

“China’s progress in algorithmic efficiency didn’t come out of nowhere. Chinese students have long been outperforming others in math and programming at international Olympiads,” Durov stated.

According to him, China’s education system surpasses the Western model because it encourages intense competition among students. This principle was borrowed from the highly effective Soviet model.

In many Western schools, public rankings and grades are often banned to reduce pressure on students. Durov believes that such measures demotivate top performers.

“Victory and defeat are two sides of the same coin. Remove the losers, and you remove the winners,” he emphasized.

Many gifted children find competitive gaming more engaging than studying because it provides visible rankings for each player.

“Praising students regardless of their actual performance may seem like a good idea, but reality quickly shatters this illusion once they leave school,” Durov added.

He also pointed out that AI benchmarks showcasing DeepSeek’s superiority serve as public rankings, and their number is only growing.

“Unless the U.S. education system undergoes radical reform, China’s growing dominance in technology seems inevitable,” the Telegram founder concluded.

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Earlier, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman called DeepSeek-R1 “impressive,” given its cost-to-performance ratio.

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Meanwhile, the startup has been accused of stealing data from ChatGPT’s developer.