Comment by adventured

It's because DeepSeek was a fast copy. That was the easy part and it's why they didn't have to use so much compute to get near the top. Going well beyond o3 or 2.5 Pro is drastically more expensive than fast copy. China's cultural approach to building substantial things produces this sort of outcome regularly, you see the same approach in automobiles, planes, Internet services, industrial machinery, military, et al. Innovation is very expensive and time consuming, fast copy is more often very inexpensive and rapid. 85% good enough is often good enough, that additional 10-15% is comically expensive and difficult as you climb.