BEIJING (Reuters) – Chinese AI assistant DeepSeek on Monday overtook rival ChatGPT to become the top free app available on Apple’s App Store in the United States.
Powered by the DeepSeek-V3 model, which its creators say “tops the leaderboard among open-source models and rivals the most advanced closed-source models in the world”, the artificial intelligence system has been gaining popularity among US users since its release on Jan. . 10, according to data research firm Sensor Tower.
The milestone highlights how DeepSeek has left a deep impression on Silicon Valley, upending widely held views about the importance of the US in AI and the success of Washington’s export controls targeting China’s advanced chip and AI capabilities.
AI models from ChatGPT to DeepSeek require advanced chips to power their training. The Biden administration from 2021 has expanded the scope of the ban designed to stop these chips from being shipped to China and used to train AI models for Chinese companies.
However, DeepSeek researchers wrote in a paper last month that DeepSeek-V3 used Nvidia’s H800 chips for training, spending less than $6 million.
Although these details have since been disputed, the claim that the chips used were less powerful than the more advanced Nvidia products that Washington wants to keep out of China, as well as cheap training costs, have made American technology executives question the effectiveness. of technical export controls.
Little is known about the company behind DeepSeek, a small Hangzhou-based startup founded in 2023, when search engine giant Baidu released the first major Chinese language AI model.
Since then, dozens of large and small Chinese tech companies have released their own AI models, but DeepSeek is the first to be praised by the US tech industry as matching or surpassing the performance of state-of-the-art US models.
(Reporting by Eduardo Baptista. Editing by Gerry Doyle)
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