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- 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
BEIJING: Chinese firm DeepSeek鈥檚 artificial intelligence chatbot has soared to the top of the Apple Store鈥檚 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鈥檚 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 鈥� write song lyrics, help work on a personal development plan, or even write a recipe for dinner based on what鈥檚 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鈥檚 Ernie Bot 鈥� asked about leader Xi Jinping or Beijing鈥檚 policies in the western region of Xinjiang, it implored AFP to 鈥渢alk about something else.鈥�
But from writing complex code to solving difficult sums, industry insiders have been astonished by just how well DeepSeek鈥檚 abilities match the competition.
鈥淲hat we鈥檝e found is that DeepSeek... is the top performing, or roughly on par with the best American models,鈥� Alexandr Wang, CEO of Scale AI, told CNBC.
That鈥檚 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鈥� critical advantage over China when it comes to producing high-powered chips 鈥� and its ability to prevent the Asian power from accessing the technology 鈥� 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 鈥� 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 鈥� the world鈥檚 dominant supplier of AI hardware and software 鈥� closed down seventeen percent on Wall Street on Monday.
And Japanese firm SoftBank, a key investor in US President Donald Trump鈥檚 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 鈥淎I鈥檚 Sputnik moment鈥� 鈥� a reference to the Soviet satellite launch that sparked the Cold War space race.
鈥淒eepSeek R1 is one of the most amazing and impressive breakthroughs I鈥檝e ever seen,鈥� he wrote on X.
Like its Western competitors Chat-GPT, Meta鈥檚 Llama and Claude, DeepSeek uses a large-language model 鈥� 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鈥檚 code, see how it works and modify it themselves.
鈥淲e are living in a timeline where a non-US company is keeping the original mission of OpenAI alive 鈥� truly open, frontier research that empowers all,鈥� Jim Fan, a senior research manager at Nvidia, wrote on X.
DeepSeek said it 鈥渢ops the leaderboard among open-source models鈥� 鈥� and 鈥渞ivals the most advanced closed-source models globally.鈥�
Scale AI鈥檚 Wang wrote on X that 鈥淒eepSeek is a wake up call for America.鈥�
Beijing鈥檚 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鈥檚 founder, hedge fund manager Liang Wenfeng, sat alongside other entrepreneurs at a symposium with Chinese Premier Li Qiang 鈥� highlighting the firm鈥檚 rapid rise.
Its viral success also sent it to the top of the trending topics on China鈥檚 X-like Weibo website Monday, with related hashtags pulling in tens of millions of views.
鈥淭his really is an example of spending a little money to do great things,鈥� one user wrote.