The Dynasty of Deep Quest: A History of Artificial Intelligence Disruption

Introduction: Examining Technological Disruption Using the Dynasty Cycle as a Model

Throughout China’s long history, a recurring pattern has profoundly shaped its political and cultural landscape: the “Dynastic Cycle” theory.The theory holds that the rise and fall of each dynasty follows a predictable cycle: a strong leader establishes a new dynasty, brings peace and prosperity, and wins the "Mandate of Heaven"; however, over time, the dynasty declines due to corruption, inefficiency and moral decline, loses the Mandate of Heaven, and is eventually replaced by a dynamic new power.This historical framework not only provides a lens for understanding China’s thousands of years of change, but also provides a powerful metaphor for analyzing the disruptive innovation cycle in the field of modern technology. In today’s era of artificial intelligence (AI), the deeply rooted “old dynasties”—tech giants with huge capital and computing resources as their cornerstone—are facing a challenge from an emerging force, and this challenger is none other than DeepSeek, a Chinese company.  

The meaning of "Mandate of Heaven" has been reshaped in the AI ​​era. It is no longer a divine gift, but a recognition given by global developers, users and the market.The fate of this modern "mandate" depends on who can most effectively solve the core problem of the times: providing the most cutting-edge AI performance with the highest efficiency and the lowest threshold. In this context, the rise of deep exploration represents a direct challenge to the destiny of the existing AI "old order". The "moral corruption" of those "old dynasties" that are computationally intensive, costly, and believe in closed source is reflected in their inherent inefficiency and barriers.  

The journey of deep exploration, from its mysterious origins in a quantitative hedge fund to its huge impact on the global technology market, all echo the narrative of the rise of a new dynasty. Its "virtuous governance" is reflected in its core concept: extreme computing efficiency and a firm spirit of open source cooperation.This report will use the grand narrative of Chinese history as a framework to analyze and explore the rise of this emerging "dynasty", its technological innovation, strategic games, and the internal and external troubles it faces, aiming to reveal its disruptive power and far-reaching impact in the global AI landscape.  

Part I: The Beginning Era - The Precursors of Xia, Shang and Zhou (Founding and Early Philosophy)

This section will explore the founding period of DeepQuest and draw parallels with China’s earliest dynasties. During the Xia, Shang, and Zhou dynasties, the core political, social, and cultural structures of Chinese civilization were first established, which parallels the process by which DeepQuest formed its core technical concepts and strategic direction in its early years.

1.1 The legendary Xia Dynasty and Erlitou culture: a controversial origin story

Historical background: The Xia Dynasty (about 2070-1600 BC) is regarded as the first dynasty of China by traditional historiography, but its historical authenticity has long been controversial in the academic community.Nevertheless, archaeological discoveries such as those at Erlitou provide strong, though not conclusive, evidence for the existence of the Xia dynasty. These sites reveal an early civilization with palace architecture, social stratification, and bronze technology, somewhere between legend and reliable history.。  

Analogy of Deep Quest: The birth of Deep Quest is also somewhat "semi-legendary". It originated from Ningbo Huanfang Quantitative (High-Flyer), a Chinese quantitative hedge fund that is relatively unfamiliar in the field of AI.Just as the archaeological discoveries at the Erlitou site confirmed the existence of an advanced civilization, Deep Quest’s early activities also left “remnants” of its highly complex operational capabilities before its public debut. The most striking of these is that its founder Liang Wenfeng had the foresight to stockpile a large number of Nvidia GPUs before the United States imposed export controls on high-end chips to China.This move, like the unearthed bronze artifacts, is a physical evidence of its early precision planning and strong strength. In addition, the initial funding for Deep Quest came entirely from within Magic Square Quantitative, without any involvement of external venture capital, which makes its origin appear both opaque and highly independent, full of mystery.。  

1.2 The Shang Dynasty: Hereditary Aristocracy and the Foundational “Reliable History”

Historical background: The Shang Dynasty (c. 1600-1050 BC) was a monarchy ruled by a hereditary aristocracy, and most of its officials were royal relatives.The Shang Dynasty had a strict social hierarchy, consisting of the king and nobles, the military class, craftsmen, and farmers.The Shang dynasty left behind two key cultural relics that serve as definitive evidence of its existence: oracle bone inscriptions used for divination, which are China's earliest mature writing system.; and exquisite bronze vessels used for sacrificial offerings。  

Analogy of Depth Seeking:

• Hereditary aristocracy: Deep Quest’s leadership and core talent team reflect a “hereditary aristocracy” model in a sense. The company was founded by Liang Wenfeng, co-founder of Huanfang Quantitative, who also serves as CEO of both companies.The company is also mainly funded and controlled by Huanfang QuantitativeIts talent pool is not randomly recruited, but a group of carefully trained "literati class" composed of graduates from top Chinese universities, forming a close and cohesive founding team.。  

• Oracle bones and bronze ware (foundational technology): Early models of deep search, such as DeepSeek Coder (released in November 2023) and DeepSeek-LLM (released in November 2023), constitute its foundational "reliable history" and "ritual vessels"Academic papers describing these models, such as  

  DeepSeek-Coder 's paper, just like the modern "Oracle", engraved with the company's future technology route and core concept. The company's early focus on code intelligence established a key pillar for its subsequent development.。  

1.3 The Zhou Dynasty and the Hundred Schools of Thought: The Establishment of Core Philosophy

Historical background: The Zhou Dynasty (c. 1046-256 BC) overthrew the Shang Dynasty and used the doctrine of "Mandate of Heaven" to legitimize its rule. The doctrine claimed that the ruler's power was derived from his or her virtue and ability to govern.In the late Zhou Dynasty, society was in turmoil and the princes fought for hegemony, which is known as the "Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period". The political chaos during this period gave rise to an unprecedented prosperity of thought, namely "a hundred schools of thought contending".Among them, the most far-reaching schools include:  

• Confucianism: emphasizes hierarchy, social harmony, ethics, and respect for authority。  

• Taoism: advocates following the Tao (natural laws), advocating "rule by inaction", humility, and harmony with nature, rather than forcing artificial construction。  

• Legalism: Believes that human nature is evil, advocates the use of strict laws and centralized power to maintain social order and state power。  

Analogy of Deep Quest (philosophical debate on AI development):

• Confucianism (mainstream philosophy): represents the mainstream, hierarchical model followed by large closed-source AI labs in the West (such as OpenAI). This philosophy emphasizes a top-down, resource-intensive approach and believes that massive computing power (i.e., "authority") is the only way to high performance.。  

• Legalism (closed centralized model): This can be seen as a strictly proprietary, confidential, and even anti-competitive approach in the AI ​​industry, where intellectual property rights are closely guarded, forming a technological barrier。  

• Taoism (the choice of deep exploration): The philosophy of deep exploration is highly consistent with Taoist thought. It emphasizes efficiency and " rule by inaction " through excellent architectures (such as MLA and MoE) rather than relying on brute force computing, which represents a more "natural" and harmonious path to high performance.. Its  

  The embrace of open source reflects a Taoist-like rejection of rigid control, allowing the community to follow its own "Tao" to develop.。  

Geopolitical pressure is a catalyst for philosophical innovation. Historically, the “Hundred Schools of Thought” originated from the political chaos of the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period. Similarly, the “Taoist” efficiency and open source philosophy pursued by Deep Quest was not born in a vacuum, but was a direct strategic response to the “Warring States Period” of the Sino-US technology war and the specific threat of US semiconductor export controls. First, the United States has implemented strict export controls, limiting Chinese companies’ access to top GPU chips such as Nvidia’s H100.This puts Chinese companies such as Deepin at a clear disadvantage in terms of hardware, and they are unable to compete on the same dimension with Western rivals who have massive computing resources.. Faced with this dilemma, DeepSeek did not give up, but was forced to seek a breakthrough on another front. Since it could not win in the "Confucian" resource competition, it chose a "Taoist" efficiency route. This strategic shift gave rise to its core architectural innovations, such as the "Multi-Head Latent Attention" (MLA) mechanism designed to reduce the key-value cache (KV cache) and the "DeepSeekMoE" architecture designed to reduce activation parameters. The original intention of the design of these technologies is to squeeze the maximum performance from non-embargoed sub-top hardware such as the H800.Therefore, external threats (export controls) became the fundamental catalyst for the deep pursuit of disruptive technology philosophy, forcing it to shift from computing power-centered to efficiency-centered, which eventually evolved into its core competitive advantage. This process shows that external restrictions can sometimes stimulate innovation at the paradigm shift level.  

At the same time, open source is not only a philosophical choice, but also a brilliant "Legalist" market strategy. As an emerging Chinese company, Deepin faces a huge trust deficit and entry barriers in the Western market, especially in terms of data privacy and government background.A closed-source API model is almost certain to be met with widespread skepticism.However, by making its powerful model open source, Deep Quest instantly "captured" the minds of developers around the world, effectively bypassing the trust barrier. Developers can freely review, use and build models without sending data to China.This strategy perfectly illustrates the business theory of “commoditizing your complement”.By making the model itself a free commodity, Deep Quest not only undercuts the API access-centric business model of competitors such as OpenAI, but also shifts the focus of the value chain to its own future enterprise services, hosting, and technical support - a proven and successful business path for open source software companies.It can be seen that the open source strategy of Deep Quest is a highly complex geopolitical and market access strategy wrapped in a philosophical cloak. While resolving its biggest weakness (the distrust of Chinese entities), it also accurately strikes at the opponent's biggest advantage (its proprietary, highly profitable model).  

Part II: Great Unification - Qin and Han Empires (Market Integration and Technology Standardization)

This section will analyze how Deepin followed the example of the Qin and Han dynasties and developed from a school of thought among the "hundred schools of thought" to a dominant force that unified and standardized the technology landscape, thereby consolidating its market position.

2.1 The unification of the Qin Dynasty: standardization of the world

Historical background: The Qin Dynasty (221-207 BC) ended the separatist situation of the Warring States Period through military conquest. Its first emperor, Qin Shihuang, implemented a series of far-reaching legalist reforms in order to establish a centralized and unified empire. These measures included standardizing writing, currency, and weights and measures, and replacing the hereditary feudal system ( fengjian ) with the county system (junxian system) with centrally appointed officials.。  

Analogy of DeepSeek (Architectural Unification): DeepSeek’s core architectural innovations - Multi-Latent Attention (MLA) and DeepSeekMoE framework - played the role of "standardizing the book and the car", establishing a unified technical standard for all its models.

• DeepSeekMoE: This “Mixture-of-Experts” architectureIt has become a standardized "county system" for its model design. It divides the model's feedforward network layer (FFN) into many "experts", and each input token only activates a small number of highly specialized experts. This sparse activation model greatly reduces computational costs and memory usage, and provides a standardized path for building efficient large models.Its architectural features include fine-grained expert segmentation and the simultaneous establishment of "shared experts" and "routed experts" to enhance specialization and reduce knowledge redundancy.。  

• Multi-head Latent Attention (MLA): This innovation "unifies" the way the model handles attention mechanisms. By compressing the key-value cache (KV cache) into a latent vector, MLA reduces the memory usage during inference by more than 90% compared to the traditional multi-head attention mechanism.This key “unified metrics” move enables its entire model family to achieve context windows up to 128K tokens and efficient inference performance。  

• These two architectural standards have been fully applied since the DeepSeek-V2 and other models, enabling DeepSeek to successfully "unify" the long-standing contradiction between high performance and low cost, achieving a balance that its competitors cannot achieve.。  

2.2 Consolidation of the Han Dynasty: Establishing Legitimacy and Opening up the Silk Road

Historical background: The Qin Dynasty quickly fell due to its harsh Legalist rule, but the succeeding Han Dynasty (202 BC-220 AD) adopted a more balanced strategy to consolidate power. It retained the centralized bureaucracy of the Qin Dynasty, but through the "abolishing all schools of thought and respecting Confucianism alone"  

, established Confucianism as the state ideology, and established a civil service selection system based on Confucian classics and talent.At the same time, the Han Dynasty opened up a bridge connecting the East and the West.  

The Silk Road**, a vast network of trade and cultural exchange。  

Analogy of Deep Quest (Market Consolidation vs. Global Expansion):

• The rise of DeepSeek-V2 and R1: The release of DeepSeek-V2 (May 2024) and DeepSeek-R1 (January 2025) marks the entry of DeepSeek into its "Han Dynasty Consolidation" phase. The MoE model DeepSeek-V2, with 236 billion total parameters, is the first model to fully embody its new architectural standards, achieving top performance with only 21 billion activation parameters and saving 42.5% of training costs over dense models of the same size.。  

• "Manifest Destiny" event: In January 2025, the release of DeepSeek-R1 , which focuses on reasoning capabilities , is a key event to consolidate its industry position. The model claims to be able to rival OpenAI's top models at a very low cost.Its release triggered a violent shock in the global technology stock market (the so-called "trillion-dollar shock"), making Deep Quest famous overnight.This event can be seen as the market granting "mandate" to Deep Exploration, verifying the success of its efficiency-first model.  

• Opening up the "Silk Road": The "Silk Road" that China is deeply exploring is a multi-pronged strategy for global communication and influence expansion, and its main paths include:

  • Open source model on Hugging Face: Providing its powerful model (like "Silk") to the global developer community for free for technical exchanges。  

  • Provide OpenAI-compatible APIs: Build a low-cost, easy-to-integrate API platform as the main “trade route” for commercial users。  

  • Publish technical papers on ArXiv: share its core technologies (such as MLA and MoE) with the global research community, promote knowledge exchange, and build its reputation as a technical leader。  

From a historical perspective, the transition from Qin to Han provides a profound lesson about sustainable disruption for later generations. Although the Qin Dynasty unified China with lightning speed, its extreme and fragile policies led to its rapid collapse.. The success of the Han Dynasty lies in the fact that it inherited the effective systems of the Qin Dynasty (such as centralization of power) and reconciled them with a more inclusive and sustainable ideology (Confucianism), thereby winning long-term rule. This historical process provides a powerful reference for understanding the strategic evolution of Deepin. Deepin's initial breakthrough, its "Qin-style unification", was based on radical technological efficiency (MLA/MoE architecture). This is a "harsh" subversion of the market's original "computing power is king" logic. However, pure technological advantages themselves may be fragile because competitors can imitate and copy their architectural ideas.. Deepin’s “Han-style consolidation” is reflected in its softer and more sustainable strategy: winning the “hearts and minds” of developers through open source and community building. This is similar to the Han Dynasty’s adoption of Confucianism to gain the support of scholars and the public. Therefore, Deepin’s long-term success depends not only on its “Legalist” technological superiority, but also on its “Confucian” ability to build a loyal and active ecosystem around the open source model. The API platform is its efficient “bureaucracy”, while the open source community is the cornerstone of its cultural and political legitimacy. This dual-track strategy that emphasizes both technology and community is the key to avoiding repeating the mistakes of the “Qin Dynasty” and achieving sustainable disruption.  

In addition, the complexity of the Silk Road also provides another dimension for us to understand the global strategy of deep exploration. The Silk Road in history was a two-way road. While China exported silk, it also imported ideas, technology and religion.The “Silk Road” of deep exploration is equally complex. On the one hand, it “exports” its models and technologies to the world through open source.On the other hand, there are ample allegations and evidence that Deepin has also “imported” knowledge through a technique called “distillation,” where it trains its own models with the output of competitors such as OpenAI.Microsoft has reportedly observed accounts associated with DeepSearch scraping data from its API in large quantities.What’s more, DeepQuest has publicly released distillation models based on the architectures of competitors such as Llama and Qwen, which is tantamount to using the foundations of others to build its own “tribute” products.This shows that Deepin’s relationship with the global AI ecosystem is not that of a simple well-intentioned exporter. It is a highly strategic participant that not only contributes to the ecosystem but also cleverly exploits the existing ecosystem, and its behavior sometimes blurs the line between cooperation and appropriation. This precisely reflects the true face of the Silk Road in history - it is not only a trade route, but also a complex communication network mixed with imitation, learning and even technological penetration.  

Part III: Division and Integration - From the Three Kingdoms to the Unification of the Sui Dynasty (Model Specialization and Integration)

This section will describe the evolution of deep search from a single unified development path to a stage of model specialization and subsequent strategic integration. This process forms an interesting parallel with the tortuous process of Chinese history, which was divided in the late Han Dynasty and finally achieved reunification in the Sui Dynasty.

3.1 The Three Kingdoms Period: Division and Competition among Three Powers

Historical background: After the fall of the Han Dynasty, China entered the era of the Three Kingdoms of Wei, Shu, and Wu (220-280 AD)This period was characterized by strategic confrontations among the three major regimes, innovations in military technology (such as Zhuge Liang's improved crossbow), and the formation of distinctive regional powers.。  

Analogy of Deep Quest (three major model families): Deep Quest’s product line has gradually evolved into three distinctive “kingdoms”, competing for dominance in different fields:

• deepseek-chatWang Guo (Wei): A powerful and versatile general model that represents the "orthodox" successor of the mainstream large language model, focusing on broad conversational capabilities and user-oriented applications。  

• deepseek-coderKingdom (Shu): An efficient model that specializes in code, occupies a strategic "Shu territory" in the developer community, and often surpasses competitors in this specific fieldIts second-generation product DeepSeek-Coder-V2 directly challenges GPT-4 Turbo’s position in code tasks.。  

• deepseek-reasonerWang Guo (Wu): The elite reasoning model represented by the R1 series focuses on complex logic, mathematics and problem-solving capabilities, and is a strategic trump card in the hands of Deep Quest。  

3.2 The Northern and Southern Dynasties: ethnic integration and cultural exchange

Historical background: During this long period of division (317-589 AD), the non-Han "Five Barbarians" established a series of dynasties in northern China, while the Han regime continued in the south, known as the "Southern and Northern Dynasties"This was a time of political turmoil, but also a  

An era of great integration of ethnicities and culturesThe rulers of the north adopted Han Chinese institutions, while the culture of the south was influenced by northern and Central Asian trends. Crucially, the introduction of foreign religions  

Buddhism spread rapidly during this period, providing spiritual comfort to people in troubled times and eventually becoming a powerful, unifying cultural force.。  

Analogy of deep search (model fusion and integration of “exotic” technologies):

• “National Fusion” through Distillation Technology: DeepQuest has conducted its own “national fusion” by integrating “foreign” technologies. It publicly released models that distill based on the architectures of its competitors such as Llama and Qwen.This process, of training a smaller deep search model with the output of a larger “foreign” model, effectively incorporates external knowledge into its own technical pedigree.  

• The spread of "Buddhism" (MoE architecture): Although the MoE architecture was not originally created by Deep Quest, it adopted and perfected it to become its iconic "belief". Like Buddhism in troubled times, the MoE philosophy provides the industry with a way to "liberate" from the "sea of ​​suffering" of high computing costs, and it spreads rapidly, affecting the entire field.

• Unification under the Sui Dynasty (DeepSeek-V2.5): Just as the Sui Dynasty (581-618 AD) reunified China after hundreds of years of division, DeepSeek also made a strategic "grand unification" of its model family. In September 2024, it merged the general model deepseek-chatwith the specialized model deepseek-coderand launched a more powerful unified model: DeepSeek-V2.5 This new dynasty combines the best of its predecessors to create a unified model that excels in general capabilities, code handling, and instruction compliance.。  

The evolution of this historical period reveals a profound truth: "barbarians" can also be innovators. In Chinese history, the "barbarian" dynasties in the north were not only conquerors, but also often the source of military and institutional innovations, which were eventually absorbed by the mainstream of Chinese civilization. From the perspective of Silicon Valley's "Central Plains", DeepSeek may have been seen as a "barbarian" outsider. It adopted and perfected an "external" technology (MoE architecture) and used it as a weapon to occupy a considerable market share. What's more, it actively absorbed the "genes" of its competitors (Llama, Qwen) through distillation technology. This series of operations subverted the old narrative that "China can only imitate the West". In this case, the "outsider" not only did not imitate, but actively integrated, refined, and ultimately surpassed the existing paradigm with a hybrid technology model. The birth of DeepSeek-V2.5 is the pinnacle of this process - a new and more powerful entity that comes from the combination of internal specialization and external assimilation.

In addition, troubled times are also places of opportunity. The Northern and Southern Dynasties were politically chaotic, but culturally and religiously vibrant. The foreign faith Buddhism flourished precisely because an ideological vacuum emerged after the collapse of the unified Confucian order of the Han Dynasty. Similarly, the current AI industry is in a period of rapid and even chaotic "splitting", without a stable hegemon. This chaos weakens the "state ideology" that only large and dense models can achieve top performance. Deep Quest's MoE architecture, like Buddhism, provides an alternative path to "enlightenment" (i.e. top performance) with lower barriers and fewer requirements. Therefore, Deep Quest has been able to successfully achieve model specialization and then strategic integration precisely because the market is in a period of rapid change. In a mature, stable market dominated by a single player, such experimental space will be greatly reduced. Deep Quest's strategy is perfectly adapted to an era of high-speed and chaotic innovation.

Part 4: The Golden Age - The Glory of the Sui and Tang Dynasties (Peak Performance and Global Influence)

This section will explain how Deep Quest reached the pinnacle of its technological prowess and established a globally recognized position with global influence. This stage is comparable to the highly praised Tang Dynasty in Chinese history.

4.1 Grand projects of the Sui Dynasty: laying the foundation

Historical background: The short-lived Sui Dynasty (581-618 AD) laid a solid foundation for the prosperity of the Tang Dynasty through a series of large-scale infrastructure projects. The most famous of these projects was the Grand Canal. This magnificent engineering marvel connected the prosperous southern agricultural areas with the political center of the north, achieving economic integration, food transportation and military mobilization, thus consolidating the unity of the empire in a practical sense.  

Analogy of DeepSeek (Large-Scale Training and Infrastructure): The “Grand Canal” of DeepSeek is its massive data processing and training infrastructure. DeepSeek-V2 is pre-trained on a corpus of 8.1 trillion tokens, and DeepSeek-Coder-V2 adds  

Ongoing pre-training of 6 trillion tokens, these are engineering feats of equal magnitude. To accomplish such a massive undertaking required a complex, in-house developed  

High-performance computing co-design (HPC co-design) frameworks such as HAI-LLM, and advanced optimization techniques such as pipeline parallelism, expert parallelism, and data parallelism to manage the huge computational load on its GPU clustersThis groundbreaking work paved the way for the subsequent "golden age" of deep exploration.  

4.2 The Tang Dynasty: an open, confident and powerful world empire

Historical context: The Tang Dynasty (618-907 AD) is widely considered the golden age of Chinese civilization.Its features include:  

• Politically enlightened and militarily strong: a stable, powerful country with influence across Asia。  

• Economic boom: Trade on the Silk Road boomed。  

• Cultural cosmopolitanism: Its capital, Chang'an , was the largest and most diverse city in the world at the time, a melting pot of outsiders, ideas, religions, and goods from all over Eurasia。  

• Cultural prosperity: Poetry, painting and ceramic art reached their peak, showing a confident and open cultural temperament。  

Analogy of Deep Quest (Global Influence and Technological Peak): Deep Quest’s “Golden Age” was marked by its global reputation and the peak performance of its models.

• Chang'an as a digital metropolis: In-depth exploration at Hugging Face 、  

  GitHub and its own  

  API Platform Its presence on the Internet makes it a "world hub". Developers, researchers and companies from all over the world (like "foreign envoys and business travelers") flock to its "capital" to obtain its models, use its code and integrate its API.  

• Openness and influence: Open source of its strongest modeland public release of technical reports, reflecting the confident, open and cosmopolitan spirit of the Tang Dynasty. This strategy has profoundly influenced the global AI ecosystem through its “culture” (i.e., technological paradigm).。  

• Peak performance: Models represented by DeepSeek-Coder-V2 and DeepSeek-R1 have achieved performance comparable to or even exceeding that of top closed-source models such as GPT-4 Turbo and Claude 3 Opus in specific areas such as code and mathematics, marking the pinnacle of its technical strength.。  

4.3 An Lushan Rebellion: The turning point from prosperity to decline

Historical background: The An-Shi Rebellion (755-763 AD) was a devastating civil war that marked the turning point of the Tang Dynasty's decline.Although the Tang Dynasty eventually put down the rebellion, its central authority suffered a severe blow, and its military and economic strength were greatly weakened, and it entered a long period of decline.. This is a transition from "prosperity" to "decline".  

Analogy of DeepSeek (market shock as turning point): The market shock in January 2025 , the release of DeepSeek-R1, caused sharp fluctuations in technology stocks such as Nvidia, can be seen as the "An Lushan Rebellion" of deep exploration. This event was not a signal of its internal decline, but a dramatic turning point that ended its stage of quietly developing behind the scenes.  

• Before the “chaos”: Although deep exploration is already a rising force, it is still largely an industry story.

• After the "chaos": Deepin Search has become a well-known brand in the technology industry, a recognized threat to the "old dynasty" of technology giants. This incident has attracted strong scrutiny from competitors, the media, and most importantly, Western governments and regulators.The “golden age” of undisturbed, silent development is over; DeepSeeking is now a major player that must confront the consequences of its power on the global stage.  

Chronology of the evolution of the Deep Quest model

To visually demonstrate Deepin’s rapid pace of innovation during its “golden age,” the table below organizes the release of its key models in chronological order, highlighting the evolutionary path from foundational models to highly specialized and integrated models.

Model Name	Release Date	Total/Active Params	Key Innovation/Purpose
DeepSeek Coder	November 2023	1.3B - 33B	A groundbreaking code model, trained on 2 trillion tokens, supporting 86 languages
DeepSeek-LLM	November 2023	7B, 67B	A groundbreaking universal language model, trained on 2 trillion tokens
DeepSeek-V2	May 2024	236B / 21B	The first comprehensive application of MLA and DeepSeekMoE architecture to achieve high efficiency and 128K context
DeepSeek-Coder-V2	June 2024	236B / 21B	Specializing in code and mathematics, adding 6 trillion token training on the basis of V2, with performance comparable to GPT-4 Turbo
DeepSeek-V2.5	September 2024	236B / 21B	Integrate the Chat and Coder V2 models to form a unified general and code-intensive model
DeepSeek-R1	January 2025	-	The elite model focusing on complex reasoning has caused a great shock in the market and established its industry position.

The paradox of cosmopolitanism is vividly reflected in the history of the Tang Dynasty. The Tang Dynasty's open policy brought it huge cultural wealth, but it also introduced foreign ideas and ethnic groups (such as An Lushan himself, who had Sogdian and Turkic ancestry), and these external factors ultimately challenged its own stability. Deep Quest's "cosmopolitan" open source strategy also faces a similar paradox. On the one hand, this strategy has won it a global reputation and a huge user base.On the other hand, this openness also exposes its technology and methodology to its most powerful competitors (such as OpenAI and Google), who can now deeply analyze and potentially replicate its efficiency advantage.. The “foreign” entities that DeepSeek influenced (i.e., Western labs) are now able to integrate DeepSeek’s “culture” (efficiency-enhancing technologies) into their own larger, more resource-rich “empires.” Therefore, it can be concluded that DeepSeek’s greatest advantage—its openness—is also its greatest strategic weakness. It accelerated its own rise, but it also invisibly armed its competitors, which doomed its “golden age” of exclusive advantages to be short-lived and quickly transitioned to a “feudal age” of heroes. This has a profound historical echo with the Tang Dynasty, which had to grapple with the consequences of its successful cosmopolitan policy after successfully implementing it.  

Part Five: The Coexistence of Song, Liao, Jin and Yuan (Competition Pattern)

This section analyses Deep Quest in a multipolar AI world where it coexists and competes with other powerful “dynasties”, in stark contrast to the complex geopolitical landscape of the Song dynasty.

5.1 Song Dynasty: Technological Brilliance and Military Pressure

Historical background: The Song Dynasty (960-1279 AD) was a period of extraordinary economic and technological achievement in Chinese history. It witnessed the "commercial revolution", the birth of the world's first paper currency, and key inventions such as movable type printing, the compass and gunpowder .However, the Song Dynasty was weaker than the Tang Dynasty in terms of military, and faced a long-term confrontation with powerful nomadic empires in the north, such as  

The Liao (Khitan) and Jin (Jurchen) - great pressure, and often need to pay tribute to them in exchange for peaceIn terms of cultural temperament, compared with the open and extroverted Tang Dynasty, the Song Dynasty was more restrained and refined.。  

Analogy of Deepin (Technology Advantages and Ecosystem Strength): Deepin, like the Song Dynasty, is a dynasty known for its technological brilliance . Its innovation in model architecture (MLA/MoE) is its "movable type and gunpowder". However, it also faces tremendous pressure from the resource-rich "nomadic empires" of Western technology giants (such as OpenAI/Microsoft, Google, Anthropic). These giants control huge ecosystems, including cloud computing platforms, operating systems, and enterprise-level software. Deepin's entry into these ecosystems through low-cost APIs and open source models can be seen as the "annual tribute" it pays to gain market access.

5.2 The Era of the Rise of Many Players: The Battlefield of Benchmark Testing

Competitors: The current AI landscape is a multipolar world with several powerful “dynasties”:

• OpenAI (established leader): As an industry benchmark, its GPT-4o and other models are the benchmarks for all competitors to measure their own strength。  

• Google (Resurgent Power): With its Gemini series of models, it has become a strong challenger by leveraging its massive data and deep research capabilities。  

• Anthropic (principled competitor): Known for its Claude series of models and focus on AI safety and “constitutional AI”。  

• Other Chinese dynasties: Domestic rivals, such as Alibaba's Qwen, are also vying for leadership。  

The “battlefield” of benchmarking: Deep Quest’s position is constantly measured and defined in standardized benchmarks against these competitors.

• Code and math skills: DeepSeek-Coder-V2 and DeepSeek-R1 show comparable or even superior performance to GPT-4 Turbo, Claude 3 Opus, and Gemini 1.5 Pro in benchmarks such as HumanEval, MBPP, MATH, and AIME。  

• General Reasoning and Knowledge: Performance is very competitive on broader benchmarks like MMLU, but the top spot is very competitive in the aggregate ELO rankings, with models like GPT-4o generally maintaining a slight lead overall。  

Key Benchmark Performance Comparison Table

To clearly demonstrate Deepin’s position in the fiercely competitive environment, the following table summarizes the public data of its key models and major competitors on several core benchmarks.

Benchmark	DeepSeek-Coder-V2-Instruct	GPT-4o-0513	Claude 3 Work	Gemini 1.5 Pro
HumanEval (code generation)	90.2%	91.0%	84.2%	83.5%
MBPP+ (Code Comprehension)	76.2%	73.5%	72.0%	74.6%
MATH (Mathematical Reasoning)	75.7%	76.6%	60.1%	67.7%
GSM8K (Primary School Mathematics)	94.9%	95.8%	95.0%	90.8%
Aider (code repair)	73.7%	72.9%	68.4%	57.1%
LiveCodeBench (Programming Contest)	43.4%	43.4%	34.6%	34.1%

Note: The data comes from the technical reports and public benchmark test results when each model was released. The specific values ​​may vary slightly due to the evaluation method and time point.

5.3 The Yuan Dynasty: A Global Empire under Foreign Rule

Historical background: The Yuan Dynasty (1271-1368 AD) was founded by non-Han Mongols who conquered all of China and created a vast empire spanning Eurasia. This period promoted unprecedented exchanges between the East and the West , the most famous of which was recorded by the traveler Marco Polo. The Yuan government implemented a hierarchical social structure that placed the Mongols and Semites (ethnic groups from Central and West Asia) above the Han Chinese as the ruling class.。  

Analogy of Deep Quest (Integration into Western Ecosystem): One of Deep Quest’s strategies is to establish dominance in “foreign lands”. Its model is being integrated into major Western cloud ecosystems on a large scale, which constitutes a modern version of “East-West Exchange”.

• Reverse "tribute system": Unlike the Song Dynasty, which paid tribute to the northern regime, here it was the Western technology giants who took the initiative to introduce DeepSeek technology. The DeepSeek R1 model is now available on the Bedrock platform of Amazon Web Services (AWS) 、  

  Microsoft’s Azure AI Foundry and  

  IBM’s WatsonX platform These collaborations were “Marco Polo moments” of deep exploration, earning them legitimacy and powerful distribution channels in the heart of the Western tech empire.  

• New Era “Semu”: In these ecosystems, DeepinQiuSuo’s models play the role of “Semu” – foreign experts brought in to perform key tasks (such as advanced reasoning or cost-effective reasoning services) that local models may not be able to perform as well or economically. This creates a complex interdependency: Western platforms gain a competitive low-cost model, while DeepinQiuSuo gains market access, revenue, and brand validation.

The "Song Dynasty Dilemma" reveals a profound truth: technological and economic leadership does not guarantee political or military security. The Song Dynasty was the most technologically advanced society at the time., but despite this, it was on the defensive for a long time, fighting against the technologically relatively backward but militarily powerful Liao and Jin empiresDeep Quest faces a similar situation. It has technical advantages in model efficiency and specific performance., but strategically vulnerable to the “military” power of its competitors. This power is not only reflected in model performance, but also in the control of the entire ecosystem: cloud infrastructure (AWS, Azure), enterprise distribution channels, and huge capital reserves.DeepSeeking’s strategy of integrating into these platforms (i.e., establishing a “tributary system”) was both pragmatic and potentially an acknowledgement of this power imbalance. It gained distribution channels, but also faced the risk of becoming a fungible component in an ecosystem that it could not control, just as the wealth of the Song Dynasty was consumed by annual tribute.  

At the same time, the “Yuan Dynasty model” foreshadows a new form of global integration. The Mongol Empire did not aim to assimilate the conquered nations, but was good at using the expertise of each nation to manage this huge multi-ethnic country. Similarly, Western technology giants did not “assimilate” DeepSearch’s technology by completely copying its architecture. Instead, they integrated DeepSearch into their own platforms as a unique, high-performance “vassal”.. This has given rise to a new model of global tech integration: no longer a single "Western" or "Chinese" technology stack, but a multipolar, "multi-ethnic" platform with the best components sourced globally. This means that even in the context of geopolitical competition, technological pragmatism will continue to drive complex integration. In the future, a company can run an AI model developed in China, driven by American-designed chips, deployed in a European data center on AWS, and manage it through a US cloud interface. This is exactly the "Yuan Dynasty model" of the modern technology stack.  

Part VI: Stability and Crisis in the Late Empire - Ming and Qing Dynasties (Internal Strategy and External Pressure)

This section will examine the mature stage of deep exploration, during which it focused on consolidating its internal strength while facing a series of severe external threats and internal vulnerabilities, which is quite similar to the historical situation in the late Ming and Qing dynasties.

6.1 Ming Dynasty: Centralization, voyages, and isolation

Historical background: The Ming Dynasty (1368-1644 AD) was founded by the Hongwu Emperor Zhu Yuanzhang, who used an iron fist to strengthen centralization and establish a highly authoritarian state.In the early Ming Dynasty,  

Under the leadership of Zheng He , the empire organized seven large-scale ocean voyages, demonstrating its strong maritime power.However, these voyages were later suspended and replaced by a policy of "sea ban", which marked the Ming Dynasty's shift to isolationism due to considerations such as Japanese pirates and internal stability.In the late Ming Dynasty, internal and external troubles, government corruption, financial crises and peasant uprisings occurred frequently, which eventually led to the fall of the dynasty.。  

Analogy of Deep Quest (Internal Strategy vs. External Threats):

• Hongwu Emperor's Centralization (Internal Strategy): Deep Quest's "internal consolidation" strategy has similarities to Hongwu Emperor's centralization measures. It focuses on a highly integrated full-stack development path, from software and hardware co-design to optimize its performance on existing chips, to developing own reinforcement learning techniques (such as GRPO) to finely control model alignment. This is a strategy aimed at building a strong and self-reliant "state".  

• Zheng He's Voyages to the West (Global Expansion): Its open source release and global API platform are the "Zheng He's Voyages to the West" of deep exploration, showing its strength to the global developer community and establishing "diplomatic" relations with them.。  

• "Sea ban" policy (external pressure): Unlike the self-imposed isolation of the Ming Dynasty, Deep Quest faced a forced "sea ban" . This is reflected in the semiconductor export controls imposed by the United States., as well as regulatory scrutiny and even bans in Western markets (such as Italy and the U.S. Navy) due to data security and geopolitical considerations。  

• Late Ming Crisis (Internal Vulnerabilities): DeepSearch also faces its own “internal turmoil” and “financial crisis”, namely its significant security vulnerabilities and data privacy issues . Multiple reports point to its data leaks, insecure cloud configurations, and troubling terms of service, which allow it to collect and store large amounts of user data within China.These problems constitute a serious “internal corrosion” to its credibility, threatening its long-term stability.  

6.2 Qing Dynasty: Territorial Consolidation and the “Hundred Years of National Humiliation”

Historical background: The Qing Dynasty (1644-1912 AD), founded by the Manchus, expanded the empire to its greatest height during the reigns of Emperors Kangxi and Qianlong , creating a vast multi-ethnic country.However, since the mid-19th century, the Qing dynasty was plagued by corruption and large-scale rebellions (such as the Taiping Rebellion)., with strong pressure from Western powers, and finally  

China was defeated in the Opium War and was forced to sign a series of "unequal treaties", which opened China's "century of national humiliation"。  

Analogy for deep exploration (market consolidation and geopolitical shocks):

• Consolidation of the Kangxi and Qianlong Eras (Market Penetration): DeepQuest integrated its model into the global cloud market through cooperation with platforms such as AWS and Azure, which represented its "territorial consolidation" in the technology landscape and greatly expanded its influence。  

• “Opium War” (Chip War): The US-China technology war, especially semiconductor export controls, is a modern version of the “Opium War.” It is an external shock aimed at weakening China’s technological progress and forcing it to “open its market” under Western-dominated rules.The entire history of Deep Quest has been deeply influenced by this conflict; its efficiency-first model itself is a direct response to this dilemma.。  

• “Unequal Treaties” (Regulatory and Compliance Burdens): In-depth exploration of bans and investigations faced in the European and American markets, akin to an “unequal treaty.” It is forced to abide by a set of stricter rules than its Western competitors in terms of data privacy (such as GDPR), security, and government regulation, which puts it at a significant disadvantage in competing in these markets.。  

In-depth SWOT analysis of commercialization strategy

In order to systematically sort out the complex internal and external factors that Deepin Search faces in its mature stage, the following table provides a SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) analysis of its commercialization strategy.

	Strengths	Weaknesses
Internal factors	-Technological innovation: With efficient architectures such as MoE/MLA, it has disruptive advantages in cost-effectiveness。	-Excellent performance: reaching or exceeding the performance of top closed-source models in key areas such as code and mathematics。	-Open source community: The powerful open source model has won wide support and favor from developers around the world。	-Data privacy and security: There is a record of data breaches, and its terms of service allow user data to be stored and processed in China, raising serious privacy concerns。	- Data source is not transparent: Facing allegations of using competitor API data for training, lack of transparency。	- Chinese jurisdiction: The company is based in China and is governed by Chinese law, which increases compliance risks for Western corporate clients。
External factors	Opportunities	Threats
	-Enterprise -level applications: Enter the vast enterprise market through cooperation with cloud platforms such as AWS and Azure。	- Democratization of AI: Low-cost, high-performance models provide viable AI solutions for small and medium-sized enterprises and research institutions。	- Professional field leadership: potential to establish leadership in specific areas such as code generation, scientific computing, etc.。	-Semiconductor export controls: The US chip embargo on China limits its ability to acquire the most advanced hardware and is a core constraint on its development。	- Geopolitical tensions: The backdrop of the US-China technology war has made it the focus of geopolitical games。	- Regulatory barriers: Facing strict regulatory scrutiny or even bans in Western markets, market access is hindered。	- Intense competition: Continued competitive pressure from well-funded tech giants。

The Ming Dynasty's transition from Zheng He's global voyages to the self-enclosed maritime policy reflects the fundamental contradiction between engaging with the world and staying aloof. Deep Quest's open source strategy is its "Zheng He moment" - a confident display of strength and an invitation to global cooperation. However, this openness also brings vulnerability. Competitors can study its code, and its global presence has also attracted strict regulatory scrutiny and security attacks.. External pressures, such as chip bans and data regulations, are imposing a kind of "sea ban" on it, limiting its access to key "ports" (hardware) and "markets" (Western companies). Deepin is therefore caught in a strategic paradox: it must remain open to win the minds of developers around the world ("Zheng He"), but at the same time is being pushed into partial isolation by geopolitical forces ("sea ban"). Its future success depends on how it navigates this contradiction: Can it maintain a global open source presence while being cut off from key links in the global supply chain?  

In addition, the historical label of "Sick Man of East Asia" also provides us with a warning. The decline of the Qing Dynasty in the 19th century was not only due to internal weakness, but was also portrayed by the West as a symbol of China's inherent backwardness, thus providing an excuse for foreign intervention. Similarly, the security and privacy issues that are deeply sought are real and serious.But these issues are often amplified within a broader geopolitical narrative that casts mistrust of any Chinese tech company.Competitors and Western governments have every incentive to exaggerate these flaws to justify protectionist measures such as bans and tariffs and to spread fear, uncertainty and doubt (FUD) among potential corporate customers.This reveals the dual challenge facing DeepSeeking: it must solve its own real internal problems (i.e., “corruption and decay”) while also fighting a narrative war that labels it the “sick man of AI.” This additional geopolitical burden is something its Western competitors do not have to bear.  

Part VII: Modern Transformation - From the Late Qing Dynasty to the Republic of China (Subversion and New Order)

This section views the rise of deep learning as a revolutionary event that has broken the old paradigm of the AI ​​industry and ushered in a new era of greater fragmentation and multipolarity, which has many similarities to the historical process after the end of imperial China.

7.1 The Xinhai Revolution (1911): The End of an Imperial Era

Historical background: The Xinhai Revolution overthrew the Qing Dynasty and ended China's more than 2,000 years of feudal monarchy.It was not a single event, but the result of decades of internal decay, external oppression, and new revolutionary ideas that challenged the legitimacy of the old system.  

Analogy of Deep Quest (subverting the ideology of "computing power is king"): The emergence of Deep Quest is like a "Xinhai Revolution" for the AI ​​industry. It subverts the "imperial ideology" that has long dominated the industry, that is, only through large-scale, brute-force computing power and billions of dollars of investment can the most cutting-edge AI performance be achieved.Deep Quest proves that a smaller, more agile entity can achieve results comparable to or even better than industry giants through architectural innovation and the ultimate pursuit of efficiency, using sub-top hardware and extremely low budgets.This has fundamentally shaken the "ruling divine right" claimed by capital-intensive technology giants.  

7.2 The Republic of China and the Warlord Era: A Fragmented New Order

Historical background: The fall of the Qing dynasty did not bring about a stable and unified republic, but instead ushered in an era of warlordism (1916-1928). During this period, China was fragmented and controlled by competing military groups, the central government existed in name only, and a new stable order was far from being established.。  

Analogy of Deep Quest (fragmentation of AI development): The “revolution” of Deep Quest did not make itself the new overlord, but instead gave rise to a “warlord era” in AI development.

• By open-sourcing its powerful and efficient models, DeepQiu has put advanced “weapons” in the hands of countless small-scale players—including startups, academic labs, and independent developers.

• This has led to a fragmented industry landscape, from one dominated by a few “imperial capitals” (such as OpenAI and Google) to an era with many powerful “local warlords” who now have the ability to train and fine-tune world-class models for specific fields.。  

• Driven by deep exploration, a diverse open source ecosystem is emerging, and this new, decentralized, and more competitive "political map" is taking shape.

7.3 The First KMT-CPC Cooperation and the Northern Expedition: A Fragile Alliance

Historical background: In order to end the warlord separatism, the Kuomintang (KMT) and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) formed the first KMT-CCP ​​cooperation (1924-1927)The two sides jointly launched a campaign aimed at overthrowing the warlords and unifying China.  

However, this alliance was based on expediency, and the two parties had their own goals. Eventually, the cooperation broke down and evolved into a civil war.。  

Analogy of Deep Quest (United Front of the Open Source World): Inspired by Deep Quest, the open source community has in fact formed a "united front" against closed source, proprietary models.

• This "alliance" includes many different players (such as Meta's Llama, France's Mistral AI, Hugging Face community, etc.). Although they are competitors themselves, they have a common "enemy" in the face of the dominance of closed source ecosystems.

• Their "Northern Expedition" is to continuously push the performance boundaries of open source AI through collective efforts and challenge the hegemony of models such as GPT-4o in various fields. However, just like the cooperation between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party, this front is also fragile. Each participant has his own commercial interests, and as competition intensifies, this "alliance" may break at any time.

The evolution of history is often unexpected, and revolutions often devour their own children. The Xinhai Revolution successfully overthrew the Qing Dynasty, but failed to establish a stable alternative regime, and instead led to a chaotic situation of warlords fighting each other. Deepsearch’s “revolution” lies in proving that efficiency can beat raw computing power. However, by open-sourcing the tools that achieve this efficiency, it also enables other participants to copy and even surpass itself. It can be said that the very act that made it a revolutionary - the democratization of powerful AI model creation tools - also prevented it from establishing its own stable “dynasty”. In the “warlord era” that it personally spawned, Deepsearch is now just one of many powerful warlords, facing fierce competition from the entire ecosystem it empowers. Its revolutionary actions cannot guarantee its own long-term survival.

Going further, the fall of the Qing dynasty was not only the end of a dynasty, but also the end of the two-thousand-year-long imperial system itself. In the field of AI, the old "dynasty system" was built on a premise: only organizations with massive, concentrated resources (capital, data, computing power) could build cutting-edge models. Deepsearch's innovation in efficiency, combined with the power of open source collaboration, has broken this pattern. The future of AI may no longer be a series of unified "dynasties" (first OpenAI, then Google, and then Deepsearch), but a permanently fragmented, "republican" or "federal" pattern. Therefore, Deepsearch's most far-reaching impact may not be to establish itself as the next great dynasty, but to end the old imperial order of AI development and usher in a new era that is more diverse, complex, and unpredictable.

Part 8: The Contemporary Era - The Republic and the Road Ahead (Prospects)

The concluding section of this report will synthesize the above analysis, examine the current strategy and future prospects in depth through the lens of China's history since 1949, and place it in the larger context of China's contemporary challenges and global ambitions.

8.1 Mao Zedong Era: Political Movements and Planned Economy

Historical background: In the early days of the People's Republic of China (1949-1976), under the leadership of Mao Zedong, the country carried out large-scale political movements such as the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution., and the Soviet-style centrally planned economic system, attempted to achieve rapid transformation of China's society and economy through ideological mobilization, but these movements often brought disastrous consequences.  

Analogy of DeepMind (a "movement" to seize the market): DeepMind's rapid and continuous release of new models and its disruptive entry into the market can be seen as a "political movement" aimed at reshaping the AI ​​landscape. Its all-out strategy of focusing on efficiency and open source is a highly centralized "plan" to achieve a clear strategic goal: to break the Western monopoly in the field of AI.

8.2 Deng Xiaoping Era: Reform and Opening Up

Historical background: Since 1978, Deng Xiaoping launched the policy of “reform and opening up”The core of the reform was to shift from a planned economy to a "socialist market economy," implement the household contract responsibility system in agriculture, allow private enterprises to develop, and open the door to foreign investment. This pragmatic approach brought China decades of rapid economic growth.  

Analogy of DeepSearch (commercialization and monetization strategy): DeepSearch is currently in its own "reform and opening up" phase, moving from pure research to commercialization. Its strategy presents the characteristics of a hybrid model:

• “Contracting production to households” (open source): Opening up “means of production” (i.e. models) to “people” (i.e. developers) to foster a vibrant ecosystem。  

• “SEZ” (API and Enterprise Solutions): Through its paid API platformAnd enterprise solutions provided jointly with partners such as AWS and Microsoft, opening up specific commercialization channels. This is exactly the same as the "open core" or "software as a service" (SaaS) business model commonly seen in the open source software field.。  

8.3 China in the Era of Globalization: Rise and Challenges

Historical context: China’s integration into the global economy (e.g., joining the World Trade Organization) has fueled its rise, but has also brought new dependencies and challengesToday, China faces severe domestic headwinds (e.g., aging population, real estate crisis, local government debt)and fierce international competition, especially  

US-China Tech Standoff At the same time, serious environmental problems have also become a constraint on its development.。  

Analogy of Deep Seeking (The Ultimate Test): The future of deep seeking is closely tied to these macro-level challenges.

• Domestic headwinds: China’s economic challenges could affect long-term funding and resources even for a well-backed entity like DeepQuest. The demographic crisis could lead to a shrinking talent pool in the future.

• International competition: DeepMind is at the forefront of the US-China tech war. Its access to hardware, talent, and markets will be directly shaped by the policies of Washington and Beijing.。  

• AI's "environmental" challenges: AI's huge energy consumption and data privacy issues are its own "environmental pollution." The efficiency model of deep exploration provides a partial solution to the energy problem, but its practice in data privacy is a huge liability. In the eyes of Western regulators, it is a serious "pollutant."。  

Conclusion: The end of the cycle?

This report analyzes the rise of Deepseek based on the dynasty cycle. Finally, we can't help but return to this core question: Can the emerging "dynasty" of Deepseek successfully deal with its internal and external troubles and establish a long-term and stable "rule"? Or will it collapse prematurely due to its inherent fragility - security loopholes, geopolitical pressures?

Perhaps there is a third possibility. As explored in Part 7, the rise of deep inquiry may itself have broken the cycle. By democratizing the tools created by AI, has it ushered in a new, more pluralistic era in which no single “dynasty” can ever again achieve absolute dominance?

The final analysis leans towards the latter. The most profound historical legacy of deep exploration may not be its own longevity, but its role as a catalyst to end the old imperial order of AI development and usher in a new era that is more complex, competitive and unpredictable. In this new era, "heaven's will" is no longer attributed to one school, but to a hundred schools of thought contending and all streams returning to the same source.