Shankar Sharma’s controversial remark on DeepSeek’s success sparks debate on X: ‘China has kicked America’s...’

Ace investor Shankar Sharma, the founder of GQuant, sparked a heated debate on social media after posting a controversial statement on X in which he applauded China for gaining a structural, long-term edge over the United States as Chinese AI platform DeepSeek gained wide popularity worldwide.

In his post, Sharma wrote, "I am absolutely delighted that China has kicked America’s ass, on a structural, long-term basis. Bahut ho gaya tha Trump, Musk, Andreessen, Ackman, et al, ka strutting, and bullying of Rest of the world. Now, shut the @#$& up and become humble."

The remark, laden with criticism of prominent American figures such as Donald Trump, Elon Musk, venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, and investor Bill Ackman, resonated widely across social media. Sharma’s choice of words, particularly his direct call for the US to "become humble," reflected his frustration with what he perceives as years of arrogance and dominance by American leaders and influencers on the global stage.

Social media reactions

While some users praised Sharma for his boldness, others criticised his comment, labelling it divisive. "As your pathological hatred towards the United States, got any logic or reason. Or you just don’t like them for no good reason and want to abuse them?" one user commented.

Another user by the handle name @yep_me replied, “Indians satisfying ego by taking joy in China being equally comparable with USA says a lot about why India can’t have its own tech revolution.”

The Nvidia connection

Meanwhile, Alexandr Wang, CEO of Scale AI, made a striking revelation about DeepSeek’s hardware stash in a recent chat with CNBC. According to Wang, DeepSeek is in possession of over 50,000 NVIDIA H100 chips, a massive haul that they are unable to openly discuss due to stringent US export controls.

Wang explained that, “The Chinese labs have more H100s than people think. DeepSeek has more than 50,000 H100s, which they can’t talk about because of the export controls that the United States has in place.” This comes as the US continues to tighten regulations around semiconductor sales, particularly to China, to maintain a technological edge.

The statement has caught attention across social media, with Elon Musk chiming in on the matter. Responding to a post by X user @kimmonismus, Musk simply wrote, “Obviously!” – seemingly confirming the underlying tension between tech giants and US policy on exports.

How DeepSeek became the top app on Appstore

DeepSeek was founded in 2023 by Liang Wenfeng, who is also the head of Chinese quant hedge fund High-Flyer. The company shot to fame last month after various benchmarks showed that its V3 large language model (LLM) outperformed those of many popular US tech giants, while being developed at a much lower cost.

DeepSeek's R1 language model, which mimics aspects of human reasoning, also matched and outperformed OpenAI's latest O1 model in various benchmarks.

DeepSeek's success sent US Stocks like Nvidia into tizzy

Monday's selloff came after Chinese startup DeepSeek launched AI models it says are on a par or better than industry-leading models in the United States at a fraction of the cost. AI chip leader Nvidia rose 4.8 per cent in pre-market trading, a day after $600 billion was wiped off its market value and the stock crashed 17 per cent, in the biggest single-session loss for any company.