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By now, you've probably heard the name ‘DeepSeek’ a number of times on the Internet.
It is a Chinese-made artificial intelligence model that topped downloads on the Apple Store.
It made a lot of people, even US President Donald Trump, take notice of it and label it a “wake-up call” for US companies urging them to compete to win.
It also affected some tech stocks, and for one particular company, it manifested as the biggest one-day loss in US history. This was the chip-making giant Nvidia. It was stripped of almost $600 billion of its market value.
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WHO IS BEHIND DEEPSEEK
Founded in 2023 by Liang Wenfeng and headquartered in the Chinese city of Hangzhou, DeepSeek is an Artificial Intelligence company.
According to the BBC, Liang graduated from Zhejiang University. He studied electronic information engineering and computer science. He then landed various jobs as a programmer at large software companies.
Eventually, he became the CEO of a hedge fund called High-Flyer Capital.
As per The Guardian, it was here that Liang utilized artificial intelligence to identify patterns in stock prices and make investment decisions based on them.
By 2021, the hedge fund’s assets under management had crossed the value of 100 billion yuan.
In 2021 itself, there were rumours that Liang had collected about 10,000 Nvidia graphic processing units (GPUs). He labelled it as a ‘personal hobby.’
In 2022, the United States of America banned the export of semiconductors to China. This ban included the Nvidia’s powerful H100 chip.
Had Liang predicted the ban? Only he can tell.
In a 2023 interview, talking about China's AI sector, he said that the country “cannot remain a follower forever.”
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WHAT IS DEEPSEEK
DeepSeek is a Chinese tech startup that has made a free artificial intelligence model that claims it was developed at a fraction of the cost of popular models like OpenAI.
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As an advanced open-source artificial intelligence system, DeepSeek has outpaced OpenAI’s ChatGPT and become the top-rated free app on Apple's store.
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Its latest offerings like DeepSeek V3 and DeepSeek R1 are labelled as ‘mixture of experts’ and ‘advanced reasoning model', respectively. The reason why R1 is gaining popularity is because it is able to provide a reasoning for its responses. This is something that mimics human thinking.
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Last month, DeepSeek’s V3 researchers and creators claimed that it was developed and trained for less than $6 million. This is a significantly smaller amount than the one spent in billions by rivals like OpenAI.
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DeepSeek is free for the end users. Other competitors like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Claude Sonnet require a paid subscription to access their advanced artificial intelligence systems.
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Despite the US placing bans on semiconductor exports to China and aiming to inhibit its ability to grow in the AI space, DeepSeek has managed to work around these restrictions and shake the AI world.
And if reports are to be believed, it all happened at a fraction of the traditional cost associated with building and training AI models.
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SAM ALTMAN'S RESPONSE
On January 28, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, took to X (formerly Twitter) to share his thoughts on DeepSeek.
Calling it an impressive model, he wrote, “deepseek's r1 is an impressive model, particularly around what they're able to deliver for the price. we will obviously deliver much better models and also it's legit invigorating to have a new competitor! we will pull up some releases.”
He concluded the post by stating, “Look forward to bringing you all AGI and beyond.”
ELON MUSK IS NOT CONVINCED
Amidst the hype around DeepSeek, there are certain allegations being made against the Chinese startup.
For instance, Alexandr Wang (CEO of Scale AI) shared in an interview that DeepSeek has 50,000 Nvidia's powerful H100 chips as opposed to the claim that it only has 10,000 chips.
Responding to an X post that had released the interview, Elon Musk wrote, “Obviously.”
According to Gadgets Now, Musk has also been responding to posts on X that are making fun of DeepSeek and likening it to the Coronavirus.
A post said, “R1 was leaked from a lab in China.” To this, Musk responded by adding a laughing emoji.
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