From DeepSeek to Stargate, AI is reshaping the global order

Theodoros Evgeniou is a professor of technology and business at INSEAD where he also directs executive training programs on AI. Ke Rong is a professor at the School of Social Sciences at China's Tsinghua University.

Last month marked a pivotal moment at the intersection of artificial intelligence, business, and geopolitics. As AI dominated discussions at Davos, Donald Trump announced an ambitious $500 billion Stargate initiative. While the great and good were gathering in the Swiss mountains, a small team of Chinese developers introduced DeepSeek, a new (importantly, open-source) AI foundation model promising high performance at a fraction of the training costs of models from tech giants like Google, OpenAI, Meta, and Anthropic.