Deepseek has always been very focused on efficency over capability, they invented a lot of optimization techniques and Huawei's inference chip were designed with their input, plus theres a good chnce they're using research from their back pocket they havent published yet.How do they make money at the end of the day? Since being so cheap(almost free) gotta incur some costs no? Else all Chinese models will be as cheap as deepseek.
And lets not forget they're a hedge fund, so they can probably make good money timing the AI market lol