Everything About DeepSeek: The Greatest AI App Ever Feared by Americans And Why It Affects ChatGPT
There’s a new kid on the block that’s already laying the groundwork to become OpenAI’s next challenger. A Chinese AI startup called DeepSeek has developed a system that rivals industry leaders on several metrics, and it’s done so with far more limited resources than the money the tech giants have.
Accordingly, if Donald Trump launches the Stargate project to prevent China from overtaking them from the right, this country will not be left behind either, and this technological cold war has caused them to wake up and look for solutions like DeepSeek.
On January 20, they released their DeepSeek-R1 model, and many have already pointed out that it outperforms OpenAI by a wide margin in key areas like math and logic. Best of all, it easily did it with half the speed of their competitors.
But it's time to go step by step and discover where DeepSeek comes from, and more importantly, learn about all those capabilities that are already being talked about that would give ChatGPT a big problem.
DeepSeek: From Nothing to AI Pioneer
The story of DeepSeek is one of those stories that makes you think, as it all started with Liang Wenfeng, who was running one of the most powerful investment funds in China until he decided to invest in artificial intelligence.
So he managed to grab 10,000 Nvidia chips, which are not cheap at all, and gathered a group of young college graduates. Many people thought he was crazy and that there was no rational reason for him to do this. But this fell on deaf ears, and the result is an AI model that puts the United States in a bind.
The key to DeepSeek’s success is its entirely new approach: Because of U.S. restrictions on access to Nvidia chips, the company has had to optimize resources to the max. The result? A model that requires one-tenth the computing power of its competitors to train.
DeepSeek's main trick: open source as a growth strategy
Beyond all of this, DeepSeek’s decision to share everything they were working on with their users was a stroke of genius. In a world where AI companies are extremely tight-lipped about their secrets, this openness earned the Chinese startup the respect and cooperation of the global AI research community. This is where your “wealth” lies.
For many Chinese AI companies, open source has become the only way to compete with Western rivals. By attracting more users and contributors, these models grow and improve very quickly.
Rather than money, as the US does, the focus here is on sharing and improving AI together, although Donald Trump's country may continue to throw up obstacles in the form of chip export controls to China, precisely for reasons like this.