BEIJING (Reuters) – Chinese startup DeepSeek’s launch of its latest AI models, which it says are on a par or better than industry-leading models in the United States at a fraction of the cost, is threatening to upset the technology world order.
The company has attracted attention in global AI circles after writing in a paper last month that the training of DeepSeek-V3 required less than $6 million worth of computing power from Nvidia H800 chips.
DeepSeek’s AI Assistant, powered by DeepSeek-V3, has overtaken rival ChatGPT to become the top-rated free application available on Apple’s App Store in the United States.
This has raised doubts about the reasoning behind some U.S. tech companies’ decision to pledge billions of dollars in AI investment and shares of several big tech players, including Nvidia, have been hit.
Below are some facts about the company shaking up the AI sector worldwide.
WHY IS DEEPSEEK CAUSING A STIR?
The release of OpenAI’s ChatGPT in late 2022 caused a scramble among Chinese tech firms, who rushed to create their own chatbots powered by artificial intelligence.
But after the release of the first Chinese ChatGPT equivalent, made by search engine giant Baidu (9888.HK), opens new tab , there was widespread disappointment in China at the gap in AI capabilities between U.S. and Chinese firms.
The quality and cost efficiency of DeepSeek’s models have flipped this narrative on its head. The two models that have been showered with praise by Silicon Valley executives and U.S. tech company engineers alike, DeepSeek-V3 and DeepSeek-R1, are on par with OpenAI and Meta’s most advanced models, the Chinese startup has said.
They are also cheaper to use. The DeepSeek-R1, released last week, is 20 to 50 times cheaper to use than OpenAI o1 model, depending on the task, according to a post on DeepSeek’s official WeChat account.
But some have publicly expressed scepticism about DeepSeek’s success story.
