DeepSeek (Chinese: 深度求索; pinyin: Shēndù Qiúsuǒ) is a Chinese artificial intelligence company that develops open-source large language models (LLM). Based in Hangzhou, Zhejiang, it is owned and solely funded by Chinese hedge fund High-Flyer, whose co-founder, Liang Wenfeng, established the company in 2023 and serves as its CEO.
The DeepSeek-R1 model provides responses comparable to other contemporary LLMs, such OpenAI's GPT-4o and o1, despite being trained at a significantly lower cost—stated at US$6 million compared to $100 million for OpenAI's GPT-4 in 2023—and requiring a tenth of the computing power of a comparable LLM. DeepSeek's A.I. models were developed amid United States sanctions on China for Nvidia chips, which were intended to restrict the country's ability to develop advanced A.I. systems.
On 10 January 2025, DeepSeek released its first free chatbot app, based on the DeepSeek-R1 model, for Apple IOS and Android; by 27 January, DeepSeek-R1 had surpassed ChatGPT as the most-downloaded free app on the iOS App Store in the United States, causing Nvidia's share price to drop by 18%. DeepSeek's success against larger and more established rivals has been described as "upending AI", constituting "the first shot at what is emerging as a global AI space race", and ushering in "a new era of A.I. brinkmanship".
DeepSeek makes its generative artificial intelligence algorithms, models, and training details open-source, allowing its code to be freely available for use, modification, viewing, and designing documents for building purposes. The company reportedly vigorously recruits young A.I. researchers from top Chinese universities, and hires from outside the computer science field to diversify its models' knowledge and abilities.
DeepSeek AI chatbot is developed entirely by Chinese software engineers, whereas AI models established in Silicon Valley are created by people of various nationalities, including H-1B visa holders from different countries working in the US. DeepSeek AI models can be seen as a significant step toward developing indigenous high-end technologies by Asian countries, helping to retain talent and reduce brain drain from nations like India and China.
View More On Wikipedia.org