Recently, internal conversation content from DeepSeek's investor exchange session was leaked. Founder Liang Wenfeng gave a complete explanation of the underlying logic behind the open-source strategy. He clearly stated, "We will definitely open-source, and even the strongest models will be open-sourced," as he could not see any inevitable benefits of keeping it closed-source. This is the first time he explained the relationship between open-source and commercial profits from a financial perspective.

DeepSeek

Open-sourcing does not affect 6x profit, but it may restrict 100x profit

Liang Wenfeng provided a clear financial logic: with a return on investment within ten months, which corresponds to about six times the profit, open-sourcing has no impact on the business model. However, if the goal is to make 100 times the profit, open-sourcing can have an impact because third parties can independently deploy the open-source model, achieving the same results at one-twentieth of the cost, thus reducing pricing power. He defined the six times profit as DeepSeek's "disciplined" strategy, believing this is a way for the company to last longer and gain more opportunities in technological evolution, thereby increasing the probability of achieving AGI.

The medium scale is the "sweet spot," which others cannot easily copy