By early 2025, the AI world had a new "Sputnik moment." DeepSeek-R1  had just exploded onto the scene, proving that a lean team from Hangzhou could deliver GPT-4 level reasoning for a fraction of the cost. As detailed in the DeepSeek-R1 Paper , the model incentivized reasoning through Reinforcement Learning rather than just raw scale. It was the ultimate "catfish" in the tank, forcing Western titans to defend their multi-billion dollar "brute force" scaling strategies. Now, a