AI is revolutionizing hardware, and DeepSeek is at the forefront of this transformation.

DeepSeek has become the "key to unlocking wealth" for the entire hardware industry.

In the first week following the holiday, Lenovo's stock price soared by 31.53% after partnering with DeepSeek and hinting at deeper collaboration. By February 7, 2025, Lenovo's market capitalization reached HK$151.585 billion, a new record high.

Image source: Lei Technology

This "DeepSeek wealth wave" isn't limited to the secondary capital market; it's directly boosting hardware sales. For instance, a brand's "DeepSeek AI Mouse" recently sold millions of units on Douyin alone. What magic does DeepSeek hold that makes hardware companies wish they'd partnered sooner?

Embracing DeepSeek with One Click: Peripherals Take the Lead

PC peripherals are the fastest to integrate DeepSeek hardware. Searching "DeepSeek + mouse/keyboard" on e-commerce platforms reveals products like "MiMouse M5 AI." This mouse is the flagship of its AI category.

Image source: MiMouse

While the product may appear unassuming, the AI button on the back underscores its positioning. MiMouse emphasizes that the mouse supports domestic systems and "DeepSeek-R1," qualifying it as "DeepSeek hardware."

The promotional page details the M5 AI mouse with 6 general and 3 professional models. Essentially, the AI button launches MiMouse AI 3.0 software on the computer. Unlike device management software, MiMouse AI 3.0 is akin to a WPS with built-in AI, offering writing, PPT, spreadsheet, drawing, and intelligent agent functions, along with voice control.

Image source: Lei Technology

On the homepage's M-AI Q&A page, MiMouse offers deep thinking options based on DeepSeek-R1.

In summary, MiMouse AI 3.0 is a portal for multiple AI services. AI requests in the app are preprocessed by a local lightweight engine, then processed by two layers of remote AI servers, and finally output to the computer. According to MiMouse, purchasing AI peripherals includes permanent free basic AI functions, in addition to subscribing to MiMouse AI's membership service.

iFLYTEK's AI keyboard uses a similar AI implementation method, leveraging local hardware to launch the computer app and call remote resources. This AI development model suits peripherals well: peripherals can't function independently of a PC, meaning "built-in AI" would be redundant. Moreover, the rapid iteration of PC AI allows peripherals to quickly adopt new AI models, like DeepSeek and future innovations.

DeepSeek Breaks Through Computing Power Barriers: AI PCs Benefit Directly

AI PCs, the actual carriers of AI software, are also beneficiaries of the DeepSeek wave. Lenovo, for instance, integrated DeepSeek into its AI agent Lenovo Xiaotian, bringing out-of-the-box AI functionality to users.

But DeepSeek's impact on AI PCs extends beyond this.

Previously, the ultra-high computing power threshold of AI PCs hindered their consumer market adoption. Microsoft defines an AI PC as one that can "run its AI Copilot locally," requiring an NPU with at least 40 TOPS performance, making many PCs "hardware deficient." Even hybrid models (local + cloud) or local interface + cloud computing power models face high AI computing costs, impeding AI PC promotion.

DeepSeek's emergence alleviates AI PCs' high dependence on hardware computing power.

Image source: GitHub

Taking local deployment (preferred by AI PC players and unaffected by network fluctuations or server busyness) as an example, DeepSeek not only open-sourced the model (releasing the complete 671B model) but also introduced multiple distilled versions of varying sizes (1.5B-70B) based on QWEN and LLAMA. This allows users to deploy DeepSeek-R1 at home, significantly lowering the AI PC threshold. (For details on local DeepSeek deployment and game creation, Lei Technology has produced extensive evaluation and tutorial content available online). For brands, open-sourcing multi-stage distilled models drastically reduces AI PC hardware thresholds and accelerates their popularization.

Android Smartphones Race to Integrate: Will DeepSeek Ignite AI Smartphones?

In the smartphone sector, brands like Lenovo, OPPO, vivo, Huawei, Honor, Nubia, and Meizu have announced integration or plans to integrate DeepSeek-R1, except for Apple and Xiaomi, which haven't stated their positions. Most initially integrate DeepSeek into existing phone AI agents. Meizu, however, aims for full integration across smartphones, smart glasses, and even its in-car system Flyme Auto.

Apple, unable to implement AI in the Chinese market, is rumored to be in talks with DeepSeek for localized Chinese Apple intelligence.

DeepSeek's potential to ignite AI smartphones can be viewed from both local and cloud perspectives:

On the client side, current mobile phone hardware struggles to run DeepSeek-R1's high-scale parameter version locally, but some chips can theoretically support 3B-7B models, making DeepSeek's mobile integration plausible. As phone AI computing power increases and DeepSeek lowers power requirements, deploying DeepSeek on smartphones will become a reality.

On the cloud side, due to scarce and costly cloud computing power, some brands limit AI smartphone functionality to flagship models. Since users often use AI features for free, it's challenging for manufacturers to offer AI across all models. DeepSeek-R1's lower hardware requirements break AI resource limitations, sharply reducing per-token computing costs, allowing manufacturers to serve more AI requests with lower hardware costs, making AI a standard feature in all smartphones.

In Lei Technology's view, making AI accessible and affordable through universal AI computing power is DeepSeek's greatest contribution to AI PCs, AI smartphones, AI hardware, and the AI industry.

Wearable Devices: A Testament to DeepSeek's Universal AI

As mentioned, DeepSeek-R1 decouples AI capabilities from ultra-high-performance hardware, bringing AI to ordinary households by breaking computing power monopolies. While this may seem like a slogan, the wearable category, actively engaging with DeepSeek, proves this point.

Constrained by size, battery life, and heat dissipation, wearable devices typically have weak computing power. In the past, they relied on auxiliary devices like phones for AI computations. DeepSeek, however, enables true AI access for wearables.

Taking audio products as an example, Sanag AI headphones are internally testing DeepSeek-R1. Earlier this year, I reviewed Sanag's AI headphones, which followed a hardware + mobile app + cloud computing power model. However, due to high computing costs, users had limited "unlimited" AI functions; cloud-based AI features like text-to-image generation required pay-per-use.

Image source: Sanag

After integrating DeepSeek-R1, Sanag's overall AI request processing costs will significantly decrease. According to MiMouse, the cost of a single short text generation request through DeepSeek can be as low as 0.0021 yuan, far less than traditional large AI models like ChatGPT.

Smart glasses, a CES 2025 star, also benefit from DeepSeek-R1. JieHuan, notable in AI audio glasses, stated in 2024 that it would charge for future AI glasses functions.

"AI Pinduoduo" DeepSeek can handle AI requests at lower costs or more requests at the same cost. This means reduced costs for businesses applying AI and consumers using AI, making AI ubiquitous. Wearable devices will be a crucial entry point for universal AI.

DeepSeek Enables Mid-Range Cars with High-Level Intelligent Cockpits

The second half of the new energy vehicle race is about "intelligence," with the intelligent cockpit as AI cars' critical infrastructure. DeepSeek's greatest value to AI cars lies in its suitability for local deployment. Many automakers have announced validating DeepSeek's "onboarding," such as Wu Huixiao, CTO of Great Wall, stating "Coffee Agent has completed integration and adaptation with DeepSeek," and He Xiaopeng, CEO of XPeng, emphasizing AI's future in the electric vehicle industry and noting that DeepSeek "not only leads in achieving a product experience comparable to OpenAI's large models but also compresses costs to an extremely low level."

Image source: Great Wall Motors

Thanks to DeepSeek-R1's lightweight and scalability, automakers can offer consumers millisecond-level intelligent voice interaction and richer in-car entertainment content without expensive in-vehicle chips. This allows mid-range and even entry-level cars to provide a higher-level AI interaction experience.

In addition to local deployment, DeepSeek's multi-level models allow users to enjoy low-latency local deployment advantages while accessing powerful cloud computing power. Future DeepSeek-based vehicle AI will transcend speech recognition, achieving multimodal understanding, enabling vehicles to "think" and offering a smarter, more humanized driving experience in digital cockpits.

DeepSeek Makes AI Education Hardware "Inclusive"

Limited by cost, education hardware's local computing power has been a major obstacle to AI transformation. This DeepSeek wave not only brings better AI to devices like educational tablets but also introduces AI to new categories like dictionary pens and story machines, giving more education hardware the chance to integrate AI.

For education hardware, DeepSeek's value lies not only in lowering hardware computing power thresholds but also in providing new teaching scenario possibilities. In the past, intelligent hardware mostly functioned in a one-way "question-answer-correction" mode. After integrating DeepSeek, products like educational tablets or dictionary pens can achieve two-way or even multi-way interaction.

It's worth noting that the current DeepSeek is just the beginning. With its overnight success, DeepSeek is bound to attract more funding, resources, and talent, evolving towards becoming "China's OpenAI." Therefore, in the future, DeepSeek may launch more multimodal large model versions. Based on this, electronic whiteboards, VR/AR headsets, and intelligent education solutions in the education hardware industry will also be fully AI-enabled, achieving a leap from online to AI education, enabling the education industry to leverage AI effectively.

Bringing Cheaper AI to the World: DeepSeek's Contemporary Contribution

From AI-powered PCs to smartphones, from intelligent cockpits to wearable devices, DeepSeek is revolutionizing the competitive landscape of the entire hardware industry with its cost-effective solutions and open ecosystem. It is evident that in the near future, the concept of "AI hardware" may become obsolete—as AI will inevitably reshape all hardware.

However, the impact of DeepSeek extends far beyond just hardware.

In the perspective of Lei Technology, it is premature to compare DeepSeek solely against GPT or ERNIE Bot/Doudou/Tongyi in terms of strength. DeepSeek's true value lies in its holistic ability to "reduce costs, enhance efficiency, and expand capabilities," embodying the inclusive benefits of "affordable AI."

Historically, AI research and development required immense computational power that was only accessible to large corporations, leaving smaller enterprises reliant on external procurement for secondary AI development. DeepSeek has introduced a more economical approach to model implementation, leveraging open-source models to drastically lower the cost and technical barriers for SMEs and individual developers to embrace AI. The recent introduction of DeepSeek hardware stands as a prime example of the "DeepSeek Effect."

Image source: DeepSeek

For various industries, DeepSeek's multi-tiered model architecture and open access not only lower the entry barriers for AI adoption but also empower enterprises to allocate cloud and local computing resources flexibly based on their needs, fostering the creation of AI products and services tailored to their business models. In this context, it is apt to say that DeepSeek has provided the final impetus for AI industrialization.

For consumers, DeepSeek's democratization of computing power signifies that AI can now be deployed across all devices, from high-end professional equipment to everyday gadgets. This means that we can now acquire better AI-enabled devices at lower costs and enjoy richer, more user-friendly, and professional AI functionalities at no additional charge.

The transformations that DeepSeek is catalyzing within the hardware industry, the technology sector, and the world at large have only just commenced.

Source: Lei Technology