BEIJING: Chinese firm DeepSeek’s artificial intelligence chatbot has soared to the top of the Apple Store’s download charts, stunning industry insiders and analysts with its ability to match its US competitors.
The program has shaken up the tech industry and hit US titans including Nvidia, the AI chip juggernaut that saw nearly $600 billion of its market value erased, the most ever for one day on Wall Street.
Here’s what you need to know about DeepSeek:
DeepSeek was developed by a start-up based in the eastern Chinese city of Hangzhou, known for its high density of tech firms.
Available as an app or on desktop, DeepSeek can do many of the things that its Western competitors can do — write song lyrics, help work on a personal development plan, or even write a recipe for dinner based on what’s in the fridge.
It can communicate in multiple languages, though it told AFP that it was strongest in English and Chinese.
It is subject to many of the limitations seen in other Chinese-made chatbots like Baidu’s Ernie Bot — asked about leader Xi Jinping or Beijing’s policies in the western region of Xinjiang, it implored AFP to “talk about something else.”
But from writing complex code to solving difficult sums, industry insiders have been astonished by just how well DeepSeek’s abilities match the competition.
“What we’ve found is that DeepSeek... is the top performing, or roughly on par with the best American models,” Alexandr Wang, CEO of Scale AI, told CNBC.
That’s all the more surprising given what is known about how it was made.
In a paper detailing its development, the firm said the model was trained using only a fraction of the chips used by its Western competitors.
Analysts had long thought that the United States’ critical advantage over China when it comes to producing high-powered chips — and its ability to prevent the Asian power from accessing the technology — would give it the edge in the AI race.
But DeepSeek researchers said they spent only $5.6 million developing the latest iteration of their model — peanuts when compared with the billions US tech giants have poured into AI.
Shares in major tech firms in the United States and Japan have tumbled as the industry takes stock of the challenge from DeepSeek.
Chip making giant Nvidia — the world’s dominant supplier of AI hardware and software — closed down seventeen percent on Wall Street on Monday.
And Japanese firm SoftBank, a key investor in US President Donald Trump’s announcement of a new $500 billion venture to build infrastructure for artificial intelligence in the United States, lost more than eight percent.
Venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, a close adviser to Trump, described it as “AI’s Sputnik moment” — a reference to the Soviet satellite launch that sparked the Cold War space race.
“DeepSeek R1 is one of the most amazing and impressive breakthroughs I’ve ever seen,” he wrote on X.
Like its Western competitors Chat-GPT, Meta’s Llama and Claude, DeepSeek uses a large-language model — massive quantities of texts to train its everyday language use.
But unlike Silicon Valley rivals, which have developed proprietary LLMs, DeepSeek is open source, meaning anyone can access the app’s code, see how it works and modify it themselves.
“We are living in a timeline where a non-US company is keeping the original mission of OpenAI alive — truly open, frontier research that empowers all,” Jim Fan, a senior research manager at Nvidia, wrote on X.
DeepSeek said it “tops the leaderboard among open-source models” — and “rivals the most advanced closed-source models globally.”
Scale AI’s Wang wrote on X that “DeepSeek is a wake up call for America.”
Beijing’s leadership has vowed to be the world leader in AI technology by 2030 and is projected to spend tens of billions in support for the industry over the next few years.
And the success of DeepSeek suggests that Chinese firms may have begun leaping the hurdles placed in their way.
Last week DeepSeek’s founder, hedge fund manager Liang Wenfeng, sat alongside other entrepreneurs at a symposium with Chinese Premier Li Qiang — highlighting the firm’s rapid rise.
Its viral success also sent it to the top of the trending topics on China’s X-like Weibo website Monday, with related hashtags pulling in tens of millions of views.
“This really is an example of spending a little money to do great things,” one user wrote.
DeepSeek: Chinese AI firm sending shock waves through US tech
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DeepSeek: Chinese AI firm sending shock waves through US tech
- The program has shaken up the tech industry and hit US titans including Nvidia, the AI chip juggernaut that saw nearly $600 billion of its market value erased, the most ever for one day on Wall Street
BBC slammed for ‘shameful’ cut to ‘free Palestine’ comment at BAFTA Awards
- Broadcaster removes from broadcast part of filmmaker Akinola Davies Jr.’s acceptance speech at the British Academy Film Awards
- Amnesty UK praises filmmaker for speaking up for those ‘facing and fleeing from persecution and mass atrocities’
LONDON: The BBC was accused on Monday of a “shameful” decision after it cut part of an acceptance speech at the previous night’s British Academy Film Awards in which a filmmaker uttered the phrase “free Palestine.”
British-Nigerian director and co-writer Akinola Davies Jr. and his brother, co-writer Wale Davies were collecting the award for outstanding debut by a British writer, director or producer for their film “My Father’s Shadow” when the former made the comment.
The BBC chose not to include the final part of his speech when it broadcast the BAFTAs ceremony later in the evening. However, the corporation did broadcast an inadvertent racist slur shouted by a person with Tourette syndrome while Black actors Michael B. Jordan and Delroy Lindo were presenting an award.
Akinola thanked industry figures and family for their support as he accepted the award, before dedicating it to “all those whose parents migrated to obtain a better life for their children.”
In the final part of his speech, cut by the BBC, he said: “To the economic migrant, the conflict migrant, those under occupation, dictatorship, persecution and those experiencing genocide, you matter and your stories matter more than ever.
“Your dreams are an act of resistance. To those watching at home, archive your loved ones, archive your stories yesterday, today and forever. For Nigeria, for London, Congo, Sudan, free Palestine. Thank you.”
The BBC, which broadcast the ceremony with a two-hour time delay, said the cut was made for timing reasons.
A spokesperson told Deadline: “The live event is three hours, and it has to be reduced to two hours for its on-air slot. The same happened to other speeches made during the night, and all edits were made to ensure the program was delivered to time. All winners’ speeches will be available to watch via BAFTA’s YouTube Channel.”
Human rights campaign group Amnesty UK described the decision by the BBC to cut part of the speech as “shameful.”
It added: “Thank you Akinola Davies Jr. for using your platform to speak out for the rights of migrants and people facing and fleeing from persecution and mass atrocities, from the Congo to Sudan to Palestine.”
In June last year, the BBC was at the center of a row after it broadcast a Glastonbury Festival performance by the duo Bob Vylan, during which the lead singer chanted “death to the IDF” in protest against the Israeli Defense Forces’ assault on Gaza.
