Deepseek became viral.

The Chinese AI Lab Deepseek broke into the mainstream consciousness this week after the Chatbot app up to the Apple App Store cards (and also Google Play). Deepseek’s AI models, which are trained using computer-efficient techniques, have led Wall Street analysts and technologists to be able to retain its lead in the AI ​​race and whether the demand for AI disks will maintain.

But where does Deepseek come from, and how did it rise so quickly in the international fame?

DeepSeek’s trader’s origin

Deepseek is supported by High-Flyer Capital Management, a Chinese quantitative hedge fund that AI uses to inform its trade decisions.

Ai-enthusiast Liang Wenfeng founded co-founder of High Aircraft in 2015. Wenfeng, which reportedly began trading while a student at Zhejiang University, High-Fly Capital Management in 2019, in 2019 focused on the development and deployment of AI algorithms.

In 2023, High-Fly Deepseek began as a laboratory dedicated to the investigation into AI instruments that are separate from its financial enterprise. With a high fly as one of its investors, the laboratory spun into its own business, also called Deepsheek.

From the first day on, DeepSeek built its own data center groups for model training. But like other AI businesses in China, DeepSeek was influenced by the US export ban on hardware. To train one of its more recent models, the company was forced to use Nvidia H800 chips, a less powerful version of a chip, the H100, available to US companies.

The technical team of Deepseek is said to be skewed Young. The company According to reports aggressively recruiting Doctorate AI researchers of top Chinese universities. Deepseek also hires people without any computer scientific background To help the technology better understand a wide variety of subjects, according to the New York Times.

DeepSeek’s strong models

Deepseek unveiled his first set of Model-Deepeek Coder, Deepseeek LLM and Deepseek Chat-in November 2023. But it was only in the previous spring, when the start of the Next-Gen Deepseeek-V2 family released models, that the AI ​​industry began to take note.

Deepsheek-V2, a general-purpose text and image-analytical system, did well in different AI criteria and at the time, was much cheaper to work than comparable models. It forced Deepseek’s domestic competition, including BiteDance and Alibaba, to lower use prices for some of their models and make others completely free.

Deepsheek V3, which was launched in December 2024, added only to Deepseeek’s notoriousness.

According to Deepseek’s internal measure testing, DeepSeek V3 is better than downloadable, openly available models such as Meta’s Llama and ‘closed’ models that can only be obtained by an API, such as Openai’s GPT-4O.

Just as impressive is DeepSeek’s R1 Reasoning model. Deepsheek, released in January, claims that R1 acts, as well as Openai’s O1 model on key measures.

Since an reasoning model is, look at R1 effectively, which helps to avoid some of the potholes that normally absorb models. Reasoning models take a little longer-usually seconds to minutes to come to solutions longer compared to a typical non-reasoning model. The advantage is that it tends to be more reliable in domains such as physics, science and math.

However, there is a disadvantage of R1, DeepSeek V3 and Deepseek’s other models. Because they are Chinese-developed AI they are subject to measure by China’s internet regulator to ensure that the answers embody “core socialist values.” In Deepsheek’s chatbot app, for example, R1, for example, will not answer questions about Tiananmen Square or the autonomy of Taiwan.

A disruptive approach

If Deepseek has a business model, it’s not clear what the model is exactly. The company praises its products and services far below the market value – and gives others away for free.

The way Deepseek tells this has enabled the breakthroughs of the efficiency to maintain the competitiveness of extreme costs. Some experts dispute However, the figures provided by the business have.

Either way, developers have taken to Deepseek’s models, which are not open source, as the phrase is regularly understood but is available under permissive licenses that enable commercial use. According to Clem Delangue, CEO of Hugging Face, one of the platforms offering Deepseek’s models, Developers on a hug created more than 500 “derivative” models of R1 which has combined 2.5 million downloads.

Deepsheek’s success against larger and more established competitors was described as ‘rising ai’ and “too much hip.” The success of the company was at least partially responsible for causing Nvidia’s share price to fall by 18% in January to attract a public response From the CEO of Openai, Sam Altman.

Microsoft has announced that DeepSeek is available on its Azure Ai Foundry Service, Microsoft’s platform that brings together AI business services under a single banner. When asked about Deepseeek’s impact on AI spending Meta during the first quarter earnings call, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said spending on AI infrastructure would still be a ‘strategic advantage’ for Meta.

During Nvidia’s earnings call in the fourth quarter, CEO Jensen Huang emphasized Deepseeek’s ‘excellent innovation’, saying that this and other ‘reasoning’ models are ideal for Nvidia because they calculated so much more.

At the same time, some companies banned Deepseek, and so do countries and governments, including South Korea. New York State too Forbidden DeepSeek is used on government devices.

As for the future of Deepseek, it is not clear. Improved models are a given. But the US government seems to be growing cautiously what it considers to be harmful foreign influence.

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This story was originally published on January 28, 2025 and will be regulated.