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Chinese Startup Storms US AI Market: DeepSeek Downloads Surpass ChatGPT

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A Chinese AI startup, DeepSeek, has made a dramatic entrance onto the global stage, sending shockwaves through Silicon Valley and being likened to a "Pearl Harbor" moment in the AI world. Despite operating under the radar for over a year, recent reports from British and American media have highlighted DeepSeek's low-cost AI applications, which have outperformed industry leader ChatGPT in both testing and training costs. The app has soared to the top of the free download charts on Apple's App Store in China, the US, and the UK, surpassing ChatGPT.

DeepSeek's AI assistant recently released its latest model, DeepSeek-R1, which has been gaining significant traction. Reports indicate that DeepSeek's training costs were a mere 5.58million(approximatelyHK5.58million(approximatelyHK43.5 million), just one-tenth of Meta's training costs for Llama 3.1. This challenges the traditional belief that AI development requires massive financial investment. In third-party benchmark tests, DeepSeek outperformed OpenAI's o1 in mathematics and reasoning, while matching its performance in programming. DeepSeek has also surpassed leading US AI companies like Meta and Anthropic. News of this breakthrough in Chinese AI technology has impacted the global chip market, causing pre-market drops in stocks like Nvidia.

A Wake-Up Call for US Tech

Some commentators believe DeepSeek's success signals that advancements in Chinese AI technology are beginning to shake the dominance of US AI and raise questions about the effectiveness of US export controls on advanced chips and AI technology imposed since 2021. Jack Clark, former policy lead at OpenAI and co-founder of Anthropic, described DeepSeek as having hired "a group of enigmatic geniuses."

DeepSeek is based in Hangzhou and was founded by Liang Wenfeng, who holds a master's degree in communication engineering. Liang made his mark in quantitative investing, utilizing mathematics and AI to transform all quantitative strategies. In 2018, his company officially adopted an AI-centric development strategy, leading to the establishment of DeepSeek in 2023, which focuses on creating human-level artificial intelligence.

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