Chinese DeepSeek App Surges, America’s AI Questioned

A Chinese start-up’s AI assistant app, DeepSeek, shot to the top of Apple’s iPhone download statistics, raising questions in Silicon Valley about how strong America’s edge in AI is.

The AI model that powers the app is generally regarded as competitive with the most recent offerings from OpenAI and Meta Platforms.

DeepSeek-R1 is here!

⚡ Performance on par with OpenAI-o1
Fully open-source model & technical report
MIT licensed: Distill & commercialize freely!

Website & API are live now! Try DeepThink at https://t.co/v1TFy7LHNy today!

1/n pic.twitter.com/7BlpWAPu6y

— DeepSeek (@deepseek_ai) January 20, 2025

Shares moved throughout Asia’s supply chain in response to its assertion that training and development were significantly less expensive.

Chinese IT companies connected to DeepSeek, such as Iflytek, saw a sharp increase on Monday, while chip-making equipment manufacturers, like Advantest, saw a decline due to the possible decline in demand for Nvidia’s AI accelerators. Concerns that DeepSeek’s AI models would challenge US technical leadership also caused US stock index futures to plummet.

As it responds to a user’s typed question or prompt, DeepSeek’s assistant demonstrates its work and logic, earning praise from investor Marc Andreessen as “one of the most amazing and impressive breakthroughs.”

This transparency was commended in reviews on Google’s Android Play Store and Apple’s App Store.

The app is one of the most downloaded productivity apps in the Play Store and topped the free downloads ranking on US iPhones.

The open-source AI model developed by DeepSeek, which was founded by Liang Wenfeng, the head of a quant fund, is causing businesses to reconsider the billions of dollars they have been investing to keep ahead of the AI competition.

Expectations that the most sophisticated AI will demand more processing power and energy, which have propelled shares of Nvidia and its suppliers to all-time highs, are refuted by its early performance.

Tech Central