Microsoft Investigates DeepSeek-Tied Group’s Access to OpenAI Data
Microsoft and OpenAI are reportedly investigating whether OpenAI’s data was improperly accessed by a group tied to DeepSeek.
As Bloomberg News reported Tuesday (Jan. 28), sources familiar with the matter say Microsoft security researchers in the fall discovered people who could be tied to DeepSeek withdrawing a large amount of data using OpenAI’s application programming interface (API).
Microsoft, OpenAI’s partner and biggest investor, notified the startup of the activity, the sources said. This activity could be a violation of OpenAI’s terms of service or could indicate the group attempted to remove OpenAI’s limits on how much data they could obtain, the sources said.
The news follows the recent release of DeepSeek’s open-source artificial intelligence (AI) model R-1, which the Chinese company says can rival or surpass those developed or backed by America’s tech giants, while being constructed for a sliver of the cost.
To be more precise, the company said it was able to train a foundation model for only $5.58 million on 2,048 Nvidia H800 chips. OpenAI and its rival Anthropic have estimated the costs at $100 million to a billion dollars using several thousand Nvidia chips.
R-1’s arrival caused U.S. tech stocks to stumble, wiping out $1.5 trillion in market value from companies such as Nvidia, Google and Microsoft.
DeepSeek showed that “small companies, individual developers, and even researchers are now able to harness the power of AI without breaking the bank,” Roy Benesh, CTO at eSIMple, told PYMNTS Tuesday.
“This can lead to the development of new ideas and technologies due to the increased competitiveness in the field. This can alter the current state of affairs by providing new options for customers where older established AI companies are likely to charge less and improve their technology faster.”
The Bloomberg report also notes comments Tuesday from David Sacks, the White House’s AI czar, who claimed there is “substantial evidence” that DeepSeek used the output of OpenAI’s models to develop its own technology.
Speaking to Fox News, Sacks described a technique known as distillation in which one AI model uses the outputs of another to craft similar capabilities.
While not directly acknowledging Sacks’ comments on DeepSeek, OpenAI told Bloomberg that it was aware that China-based companies are “constantly trying to distill the models of leading US AI companies.”
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