Debunking the DeepSeek and Chinese Lithography Panic: Exaggerated Costs and Gaps
teortaxesTex · x · 2026-07-30
The post fact-checks two recent China-related narratives that triggered massive sell-offs in Western stock markets:
- DeepSeek Training Costs: The initial claim of training with 2,048 chips for $5.5M wiped out $589B from Nvidia's market cap. However, a later SemiAnalysis report estimated it actually required 50,000 GPUs costing $1.6B, with sources indicating they possessed restricted H100s.
- Chinese DUV Lithography: News of a domestic DUV machine erased $40B from ASML's valuation. In reality, China already produced dry DUV systems. The newly revealed immersion version is just an incremental step, not a revolution. Its specs are reportedly on par with ASML's 2008 models, based on anonymous sources without official confirmation.
More from Companies & People
- Anthropic's Annualized Revenue Growth Hits 87x, Still 'Criminally Underrated' — zetalyrae · 2026-07-30
- Why Is It Harder to Get a Job After Building a Company? Spirit AI Head of Product Shares Transition Experience — yongqianme · 2026-07-30
- Ex-Citadel COO: AI's Biggest Winners Aren't the Biggest Token Spenders — vasuman · 2026-07-30
- The $20M Demo Trap: Why Robotics Startups Fail at Production — RexDouglass · 2026-07-30
- Extreme YC Party Stunt: 7 People Get Startup Tattoos for Instant Interview — var_epsilon · 2026-07-30
- DeepMind Denies Pivot: Science Team Expands with Gemini-Powered Agents — chaitjo · 2026-07-30