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What’s DeepSeek, China’s AI startup sending shockwaves through global tech?

Chip giant Nvidia shed nearly $600bn in market value after Chinese AI model cast doubt on supremacy of US tech firms.

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DeepSeek, which is based in Hangzhou, was founded in late 2023 by Liang Wenfeng [Dado Ruvic/Reuters]

By John Power

Published On 28 Jan 2025

28 Jan 2025

DeepSeek, a little-known Chinese startup, has sent shockwaves through the global tech sector with the release of an artificial intelligence (AI) model whose capabilities rival the creations of Google and OpenAI.

DeepSeek-R1’s creator says its model was developed using less advanced, and fewer, computer chips than employed by tech giants in the United States.

In a research paper released last week, the model’s development team said they had spent less than $6m on computing power to train the model – a fraction of the multibillion-dollar AI budgets enjoyed by US tech giants such as OpenAI and Google, the creators of ChatGPT and Gemini, respectively.

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