From DeepSeek to Quack: When the Dream of Distributed DuckDB Started to Feel Real (opens in new tab)

At the beginning of 2025, DeepSeek changed the conversation around AI infrastructure. Most people focused on the model quality, the training cost, and the geopolitical story around a new Chinese AI lab suddenly competing with the biggest names in the industry. That part was interesting, of course. But as an engineer, the part that caught my attention was not only the model. It was the data pipeline behind it. DeepSeek released Smallpond, a lightweight data processing framework built on DuckDB...