Rwanda: Deepseek - Chinese AI Takes Tech World By Storm

29 January 2025

A Chinese made artificial intelligence (AI) model called DeepSeek has shot to the top of Apple Store's downloads, stunning investors and sinking some tech stocks.

Its latest version was released on 20 January, quickly impressing AI experts before it got the attention of the entire tech industry - and the world.

US President Donald Trump said it was a "wake-up call" for US companies who must focus on "competing to win".

What makes DeepSeek so special is the company's claim that it was built at a fraction of the cost of industry-leading models like OpenAI - because it uses fewer advanced chips.

That possibility caused chip-making giant Nvidia to shed almost $600bn (£482bn) of its market value on Monday - the biggest one-day loss in US history.

DeepSeek also raises questions about Washington's efforts to contain Beijing's push for tech supremacy, given that one of its key restrictions has been a ban on the export of advanced chips to China.

What is DeepSeek?

DeepSeek is the name of a free AI-powered chatbot, which looks, feels and works very much like ChatGPT.

That means it's used for many of the same tasks, though exactly how well it works compared to its rivals is up for debate.

It is reportedly as powerful as OpenAI's o1 model - released at the end of last year - in tasks including mathematics and coding.

Like o1, R1 is a "reasoning" model. These models produce responses incrementally, simulating a process similar to how humans reason through problems or ideas. It uses less memory than its rivals, ultimately reducing the cost to perform tasks.

Deepseek says it has been able to do this cheaply - researchers behind it claim it cost $6m (£4.8m) to train, a fraction of the "over $100m" alluded to by OpenAI boss Sam Altman when discussing GPT-4.

DeepSeek's founder reportedly built up a store of Nvidia A100 chips, which have been banned from export to China since September 2022.

Some experts believe this collection - which some estimates put at 50,000 - led him to build such a powerful AI model, by pairing these chips with cheaper, less sophisticated ones.

The same day DeepSeek's AI assistant became the most-downloaded free app on Apple's App Store in the US, it was hit with "large-scale malicious attacks", the company said, causing the company to temporary limit registrations.

AllAfrica publishes around 500 reports a day from more than 110 news organizations and over 500 other institutions and individuals, representing a diversity of positions on every topic. We publish news and views ranging from vigorous opponents of governments to government publications and spokespersons. Publishers named above each report are responsible for their own content, which AllAfrica does not have the legal right to edit or correct.

Articles and commentaries that identify allAfrica.com as the publisher are produced or commissioned by AllAfrica. To address comments or complaints, please Contact us.