Social media exploded in a celebration after the news that a Chinese start-up had made an artificial intelligence tool that was more efficient than any in the United States.

China's success in building DeepSeek R1 AI with home-grown talent has renewed the debate over H-1B visas that US tech giants used to hire temporary workers, especially from India. Though DeepSeek AI is being used to bash the hiring of Indians through H-1B,

In some ways, DeepSeek was far less censored than most Chinese platforms, offering answers with keywords that would often be quickly scrubbed on domestic social media. Other times, the program eventually censored itself.