DeepSeek shocked the tech world last month. There’s a reason for that, according to AI experts, who say we’re likely just seeing the beginning of the Chinese tech startup’s influence in the field.
In late January, DeepSeek made headlines with its R1 AI model, which the company said roughly matched the performance of Open AI’s O1 model but cost a fraction of the price. DeepSeek briefly replaced ChatGPT as the top app in Apple’s App Store, sending tech stocks tumbling.
The achievement prompted U.S. tech giants to question America’s place in the AI race with China, and the billions of dollars behind those efforts. While Vice President JD Vance didn’t mention DeepSeek or China by name during his speech at the AI Action Summit in Paris on Tuesday, he did emphasize the importance of America’s lead in the field.
“The United States is a leader in AI , and our government plans to keep it that way,” he said, but added that “the United States wants to work with other countries.”
But there’s more to DeepSeek’s efficiency and capabilities than that. Experts say DeepSeek R1’s ability to reason and “think” answers to deliver high-quality results, combined with the company’s decision to make key parts of its technology public, will drive growth in the field.
While AI has long been used in tech products, it has reached a tipping point in the past two years thanks to the rise of ChatGPT and other generative AI services that have reshaped how people work, communicate and find information. It’s made companies like chipmaker Nvidia Wall Street darlings and upended the trajectory of Silicon Valley giants. So any development that helps build more powerful and efficient models is sure to be closely watched.
“This is definitely not hype,” said Oren Etzioni, former CEO of the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence. “But it’s also a world that’s changing very quickly.”
AI’s TikTok Moment
Tech leaders were quick to react to DeepSeek’s rise. Demis Hassabis, CEO of Google DeepMind, called the hype around DeepSeek “overblown,” but he also said the model was “probably the best work I’ve seen in China,” according to CNBC.
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said on the company’s quarterly earnings call in January that DeepSeek had some “real innovation,” while Apple CEO Tim Cook said on the iPhone maker’s earnings call that “innovation that drives efficiency is a good thing.”
But the attention isn’t all positive. Semiconductor research firm SemiAnalysis cast doubt on DeepSeek’s claim that it cost just $5.6 million to train. OpenAI told the Financial Times it found evidence that DeepSeek used the U.S. company’s models to train its own competitors.
“We are aware of and are reviewing indications that DeepSeek may have improperly improved our models, and we will share that information once we learn more,” an OpenAI spokesperson told CNN in a statement. DeepSeek was not immediately available for comment.
Two U.S. lawmakers called for a ban on the app on government devices after security researchers highlighted its possible links to the Chinese government, according to the Associated Press and ABC. Similar concerns have been raised about the popular social media app TikTok, which must be sold to a U.S. owner or risk being banned in the U.S.
“DeepSeek is the TikTok of (large language models),” Etzioni said.
How DeepSeek impressed the tech worldTech giants are already thinking about how DeepSeek’s technology will impact their products and services.
“DeepSeek basically gave us a solution in the form of a technical paper, but they didn’t provide the additional missing pieces,” said Lewis Tunstall, a senior research scientist at Hugging Face, an AI platform that provides tools for developers.
Tunstall is leading Hugging Face’s efforts to fully open source DeepSeek’s R1 model; while DeepSeek provided the research paper and model parameters, it did not reveal the code or training data.
Nadella said on Microsoft’s earnings call that Windows Copilot+ PCs (i.e. PCs built to specific specifications to support AI models) will be able to run AI models extracted from DeepSeek R1 locally. Mobile chip maker Qualcomm said on Tuesday that models extracted from DeepSeek R1 were running on smartphones and PCs equipped with its chips within a week.
AI researchers, academics and developers are still exploring what DeepSeek means for AI progress.
DeepSeek’s model isn’t the only open source model, nor is it the first that can reason about an answer before responding; OpenAI’s o1 model, which launched last year, can do that, too.
What makes DeepSeek so important is its ability to reason and learn from other models, and theAI community can see what’s going on behind the scenes. Those who use the R1 model in the DeepSeek app can also see how it “thinks” as it answers questions.
“You can see the wheels turning inside the machine,” Durga Malladi, senior vice president and general manager of technology planning and edge solutions at Qualcomm, told CNN.
Skip to content
DISCOUNT LAPTOP BATTERY/ADAPTER STORE- BATTERYFORPC.CO.UK