DeepSeek feels like the most...trying to think of the word, honest isn't quite right but close, of the AI companies. They make very good models that are phenome

DeepSeek feels like the most...trying to think of the word, honest isn't quite right but close, of the AI companies. They make very good models that are phenomenally efficient and they sell them at what seems to be a modest margin. They're just running a business. Doesn't feel like a Ponzi scheme. It doesn't feel like they're trying to take over the world and be the only AI company through regulatory capture or cornering the market on RAM and compute, they're not adding "memory" and personality tuned to maximize psychosis or addiction. They're not benchmaxxing the way Kimi and Qwen are benchmaxxed; you can find the holes and weirdness in those models capabilities pretty quickly. DeepSeek models feel like good all-rounders. Not the best at anything, but you won't be shocked by it doing stupid shit, either. Qwen keeps stunning me with really dumb bugs it creates even while being able to work on really big really hard problems, it's surprisingly sloppy. I dunno. I don't have good feelings about most of the AI companies; I feel like they're trying to be predatory and monopolistic. I don't get that feeling from DeepSeek, they seem like a decent company making a good product at a fair price. So, they're consistently my choice for API usage, even if I still use the best American models for agentic use, via a subscription.