The Fight for AI Market Dominance | CNBC Marathon

CNBC Marathon explores how different big tech companies are fighting for AI market dominance.

A little-known AI lab out of China has ignited panic throughout Silicon Valley after releasing AI models that can outperform America’s best despite being built more cheaply and with less-powerful chips. DeepSeek, as the lab is called, unveiled a free, open-source large-language model in late December that it says took only two months and less than $6 million to build. The new developments have raised alarms on whether America’s global lead in artificial intelligence is shrinking and called into question big tech’s massive spend on building AI models and data centers. In a set of third-party benchmark tests, DeepSeek’s model outperformed Meta’s Llama 3.1, OpenAI’s GPT-4o and Anthropic’s Claude Sonnet 3.5 in accuracy ranging from complex problem-solving to math and coding. CNBC’s Deirdre Bosa has the story. This video also includes Bosa’s full interview with Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas.

Humanoid robots are catching the attention, and billions of investment dollars, from big tech companies like Amazon, Google, Nvidia and Microsoft. Elon Musk is betting the future of Tesla on these machines, predicting its robot, Optimus, could propel it to a $25 trillion market cap. Powered by artificial intelligence, these bots have seen quantum leaps in what they’re capable of in just the past few years. CNBC’s Kate Rooney speaks with Agility Robotics, Apptronik, Sanctuary AI and others to explore the rise of these AI-driven humanoids, if they’re a cure-all for our global workforce problems, or if this is yet another tech bubble.

Microsoft, Google and Amazon, along with other tech companies, have been getting creative in how they’re poaching talent from top artificial intelligence startups. Earlier this month, Google inked an unusual deal with Character.ai to hire away its prominent founder, Noam Shazeer, along with more than one-fifth of its workforce while also licensing its technology. It looked like an acquisition, but the deal was structured so that it wasn’t. Google wasn’t the first to take this approach. In March, Microsoft signed a deal with Inflection that allowed Microsoft to use Inflection’s models and to hire most of the startup’s staff. Amazon followed in June with a faux acquisition of Adept where it hired top talent from the AI startup and licensed its technology. It’s a playbook that skirts regulators and their crackdown on Big Tech dominance, provides an exit for AI startups struggling to make money, and allows megacaps to pick up the talent needed in the AI arms race. But while tech giants might think they’re outsmarting antitrust enforcers, they could be playing with fire. CNBC’s Deirdre Bosa has the story.

Chapters:

Anchor: Deirdre Bosa

Produced by: Andrew Evers. Jasmine Wu, Laura Batchelor, Drew Troast

Reporter: Kate Rooney

Edited by: Matt Soto,

Field Producer: Kevin Schmidt

Senior Director: Jeniece Pettitt

Additional Camera: Katie Tarasov, Lisa Setyon

Additional Footage: Getty Images, Character.ai, Agility Robotics, Sanctuary AI, Apptronik, Tesla, Figure AI, Boston Dynamics, Nvidia

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The Fight for AI Market Dominance | CNBC Marathon