Cintia A. , Lebledparle.com
Deepseek model R1 was launched on January 20, 2025. This ai model is the product of a Chinese start-up controlled by Liang Wenfeng. It is an artificial intelligence like Chat Gpt and others but it focuses on reasoning tasks and challenges OpenAI’s o1 model with its advanced capabilities. It’s easy and fast use has been commended a lot by users who have dubbed it the “Messiah“.
According to media sources, few days after its launch, it surpassed ChatGPT in popularity, reaching No. 1 on the U.S. It’s relatively fast and low cost has disrupted the US tech market. NBC news revealed that Nvidia shares fell by 13% after the market opened on Monday, wiping $465 billion from the AI chipmaker’s market cap. It was the biggest drop in value in U.S. stock market history, per Bloomberg, Microsoft and Alphabet fell 4% each while Meta fell nearly 2%. It’s cheap rate has caused people to wonder why US tech is overpriced and over hyped seeing that not much was spent on Deep seek R1 model but it delivers effectively.
One of the key factor behind Deepseek’s success is its affordability. The company reportedly used around 2,000 Nvidia H800 chips, which Nvidia tailored exclusively for China with lower data transfer rates, or slowed-down speeds when compared to the H100 chips used by U.S. companies and there equally claims that it takes $100 million to train AI, whereas Deepseek model cost lesser. The cost efficiency sparked debate, with Meta’s chief AI scientist Yann LeCun stating in a Threads post on Saturday that DeepSeek’s achievement is as a result of open source. More like a copy paste version but it just does it more better and faster.
Concerns have been raised in regards to the platform’s privacy and transparency, to which Apple App Store and Google Play Store reviews have praised its level of transparency as compared to Bloomberg. The US will no longer have monopoly in the AI industry as China keeps on improving themselves to enter into the tech market and are seemingly gaining grounds.
It is worth noting that DeepSeek’s team primarily comprises young, talented graduates of not more than 30 years of age from top Chinese universities, promoting a culture of innovation as company’s hiring practices prioritize technical abilities over traditional work experience, resulting in a team of highly skilled individuals with a fresh perspective on AI development. This reflects China’s growing ambition in the tech industry.
