What is DeepSeek – and why is everyone talking about it?

A Chinese-made artificial intelligence ( AI ) model called DeepSeek has shot to the top of Apple Store’s downloads, stunning investors and sinking some tech stocks.

It was made available on January 20 and immediately caught the attention of the entire software sector, as well as the rest of the world.

Donald Trump, the president of the US, referred to it as a “wake-up phone” for US businesses who may concentrate on” competing to win.”

Due to the company’s claim that it was produced for less money than market-leading types like OpenAI, which is what makes DeepSeek so unique.

That possibility caused chip-making giant Nvidia to shed almost$ 600bn ( £482bn ) of its market value on Monday- the biggest one-day loss in US history.

DeepSeek also raises concerns about Washington’s efforts to stop Beijing’s push for technological dominance. One of the major restraints has been a moratorium on China’s export of superior cards.

Beijing, nevertheless, has doubled down, with President Xi Jinping declaring AI a major concern. And as China transitions from conventional manufacturing to advanced technology chips, electric vehicles, and AI, start-ups like DeepSeek are important.

So what do we hear about DeepSeek?

At its simplest, DeepSeek is an AI-powered bot, like ChatGPT.

According to DeepSeek, this completely app is available for download on the Apple App Store because it “aims to answer your questions and improve your life effectively.”

But the Artificial type that powers it- called R1- has some 670 billion parameters, making it the largest open-source big language model but, according to Anil Ananthaswamy, author of Why Machines Learn: The Elegant Math Behind Modern

Its officially as effective as OpenAI’s O1 design- which powers ChatGPT- in mathematics, programming and logic.

Like Baidu’s Ernie or Doubao by ByteDance, DeepSeek is trained to avoid socially delicate inquiries.

DeepSeek, a forbidden theme in China, did not provide any details about the murder at Tiananmen Square on June 4, 1989, when the BBC asked the game for information.

It replied:” I am sorry, I cannot answer that question. I’m an AI associate who can respond in a safe, helpful way.

China’s support of the government was perceived as a significant obstacle to the development of AI. But DeepSeek appears to have been trained on an open-source design, which enables it to perform complex duties, while also withholding specific information.

And it claims to be able to do this affordably- researchers who are in charge claim that the project cost$ 6 million ( £4.8 million ) to build, a shoestring budget in comparison to the billions spent by AI companies in the US.

How specifically they did this is still questionable. According to the leader of DeepSeek, the company owned a shop filled with Nvidia A100 cards, which have been prohibited from exporting to China since September 2022.

Experts believe that by combining these chips with less expensive, less powerful ones, he created such a powerful AI model. Some estimates place this number at$ 50,000.

Liang Wenfeng founded DeepSeek in December 2023, and the company released its first large-language AI AI design the next season.

Liang graduated from Zhejiang University with degrees in computer science and digital data engineering, but little is known about him. But he is now in the limelight abroad.

He was just seen at a conference hosted by China’s top Li Qiang, reflecting DeepSeek’s growing fame in the AI business.

Mr. Liang has a background in finance, in contrast to some Silicon Valley-based AI businesses in America.

He is the CEO of a wall bank called High-Flyer, which uses AI to analyze economic data to make purchase decisions- what is known as quantitative trading. In 2019 High-Flyer became the first quant hedge fund in China to raise over 100 billion yuan ($ 13m ).

In a speech he gave that month, Liang said,” If the US may produce its numerical trading business, why not China”?

In a unique interview next year, he said China’s AI sector” may keep a follower permanently”.

He went on:” Frequently, we say there’s a one or two-year difference between Chinese and American AI, but the actual difference is between originality and copy. If this doesn’t shift, China will always be a disciple”.

When asked why DeepSeek’s business model surprised therefore many Silicon Valley residents, he responded,” Their wonder comes from seeing a Chinese company join their sport as an entrepreneur rather than just a believer, which is what most Chinese companies are used to doing.”

The success of DeepSeek undermines the idea that only higher-end chips and bigger budgets can advance AI, which has sparked doubt about the development of high-performance cards.

” DeepSeek has proven that cutting-edge Artificial designs can be developed with minimal determine assets”, says Wei Sun, main AI researcher at Counterpoint Research.

” In distinction, OpenAI, valued at$ 157 billion, faces scrutiny over its ability to maintain a powerful edge in advancement or defend its massive valuation and expenditures without delivering important returns”.

Financial markets were wracking with the company’s potential lower costs on January 27 as a result of a broad sell-off that included chip manufacturers and data centers all over the world, which saw the tech-heavy Nasdaq fall more than 3 %.

Nvidia’s stock price dropped 17 % over the course of the day, making it seem as though it was hit badly.

The chip maker had been the most valuable company in the world, when measured by market capitalisation, but fell to third place after Apple and Microsoft on Monday, when its market value shrank to$ 2.9tn from$ 3.5tn, Forbes reported.

DeepSeek’s rise is a huge boost for the Chinese government, which has been seeking to build tech independent of the West.

While the Communistyt Party is yet to comment, Chinese state media was eager to note that Silicon Valley and Wall Sreet giants were “losing sleep” over DeepSeek, which was “overturning” the US stock market.

” In China, DeepSeek’s advances are being celebrated as a testament to the country’s growing technological prowess and self-reliance”, says Marina Zhang, an associate professor at the University of Technology Sydney.

” The company’s success is seen as a validation of China’s Innovation 2.0, a new era of homegrown technological leadership driven by a younger generation of entrepreneurs”.

But she also warned that this sentiment may also lead to “tech isolationism”.

Additional reporting by João da Silva