What is DeepSeek, the Chinese AI startup that shook the tech world?
CNN
DeepSeek R1, the surprisingly efficient and powerful Chinese AI model, has taken the technology industry by storm and is rattling nerves on Wall Street.
A surprisingly efficient and powerful Chinese AI model has taken the technology industry by storm. It’s called Deepseek R1, and it’s rattling nerves on Wall Street. The new AI model was developed by DeepSeek, a startup that was born just a year ago and has somehow managed a breakthrough that famed tech investor Marc Andreesen has called “AI’s Sputnik moment”: R1 can nearly match the capabilities of its far more famous rivals, including OpenAI’s GPT-4, Meta’s Llama and Google’s Gemini – but at a fraction of the cost. The company said it had spent just $5.6 million training its newest AI model, compared with the hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars US companies spend on their AI technologies. That’s even more shocking when considering that the United States has worked for years to restrict the supply of high-power AI chips to China, citing national security concerns. That means DeepSeek was supposedly able to achieve its low-cost model on relatively under-powered AI chips. The company, founded in late 2023 by Chinese hedge fund manager Liang Wenfeng, is one of scores of startups that have popped up in recent years seeking big investment to ride the massive AI wave that has taken the tech industry to new heights. Liang has become the Sam Altman of China – an evangelist for AI technology and investment in new research. His hedge fund, High-Flyer, focuses on AI development. Like other AI startups, including Anthropic and Perplexity, DeepSeek released various competitive AI models over the past year that have captured some industry attention. Its V3 model raised some awareness about the company, although its content restrictions around sensitive topics about the Chinese government and its leadership sparked doubts about its viability as an industry competitor, the Wall Street Journal reported.
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