Tech war: DeepSeek fires up AI deployments into PCs, robots and EVs amid US sanctions

Yahoo

08-02-2025

DeepSeek has triggered a wave of artificial intelligence (AI) deployments across China's hi-tech manufacturing sector - including personal computers, robots and electric vehicles (EVs) - after the company emerged as the country's newest symbol of overcoming US sanctions.
PC giant Lenovo Group, Shenzhen-based robotics firm UBTech and EV maker Geely are among the first major Chinese manufacturing enterprises to push DeepSeek technology into their products.
Those initiatives reflect how much DeepSeek has caught the attention of the technology industry at home and abroad, following its recent AI breakthrough.
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The Hangzhou-based start-up released two high-performance AI models, DeepSeek-V3 and DeepSeek-R1, that were developed at a fraction of the cost and computing power that major tech companies muster to build large language models - the technology underpinning generative AI services like ChatGPT.
Lenovo has integrated DeepSeek's model into its Xiaotian AI assistant on its PCs, enhancing capabilities from text understanding and code generation to maths and reasoning skills, the company said in a Weibo post this week.
Xiaotian was introduced early last year by Lenovo - which plans a wider roll-out into its tablets, smartphones and other products - to automate tasks such as summarising or translating documents, as well as transcribing the minutes of a meeting.
Lenovo is considering a closer collaboration with DeepSeek, according to a report by state-owned Securities Times, citing sources close to the company.
The world's top PC maker did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Friday.
Lenovo's engagement with DeepSeek comes the same week that the computer maker published a commissioned report, the 2025 CIO Playbook, that found proving AI's return on investment to be the greatest barrier to the technology's adoption in organisations.
The report revealed that 37 per cent of management remained sceptical or had reservations toward AI, while about nine out of 10 information-technology professionals in these organisations said that AI met their expectations.
"AI is a marathon and a sprint - requiring parallel efforts to move quickly to modernise systems, while ensuring the future-proofing of tech stacks," said Ken Wong, president of Lenovo's solutions and services group. "Our research shows organisations need to simplify the design, deployment and integration of AI solutions to demonstrate the impact of these investments. This will instil greater confidence and fuel future investments."
DeepSeek's AI breakthrough appears to level the playing field for enterprises around the world, as the Chinese firm's models offer enterprises access to advanced technology at a lower cost.
A humanoid robot called Walker S Lite, developed by UBTech, moves a heavy load onto an automated guided vehicle at a smart factory in Ningbo, a city in eastern Zhejiang province. Photo: VCG via Getty Images alt=A humanoid robot called Walker S Lite, developed by UBTech, moves a heavy load onto an automated guided vehicle at a smart factory in Ningbo, a city in eastern Zhejiang province. Photo: VCG via Getty Images>
UBTech, China's largest maker of humanoid robots, is currently working on how to use DeepSeek's AI models in its robots, according to a report by Chinese digital news outlet The Paper. Tests include helping robots understand instructions in a complicated real-world environment and carrying out tasks in a factory.
Geely, meanwhile, is incorporating DeepSeek's R1 reasoning model into its self-developed Xinrui AI model, as part of efforts to build an in-vehicle AI that could understand and predict a motorist's needs, according to a report by local news service Yicai.
Geely did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
"DeepSeek brings a new opportunity for AI downstream application and business scenarios, thanks to its models' significant cost advantage and open-source approach," analysts at TF Securities wrote in a note to clients on Thursday.
Open source gives public access to a program's source code, allowing third-party software developers to modify or share its design, fix broken links or scale up its capabilities. Open-source technologies have been a huge contributor to China's flourishing tech industry over the past few decades.
Beyond tech hardware makers, Youdao - the online education unit of Chinese video-gaming powerhouse NetEase - said on Thursday that it was "fully embracing DeepSeek-R1" to promote the use of AI in the ed-tech sector. Shanghai-listed Jiangsu Hengrui Pharmaceuticals also filed a notice to investors that it would "comprehensively" apply DeepSeek technology in its operations.
This article originally appeared in the South China Morning Post (SCMP), the most authoritative voice reporting on China and Asia for more than a century. For more SCMP stories, please explore the SCMP app or visit the SCMP's Facebook and Twitter pages. Copyright © 2025 South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved.
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