China’s DeepSeek is shaking up the AI landscape, positioning itself as a major disruptor in both financial and technological terms. In a stunning leap, it may have helped China close the gap in AI development, moving from 18 months behind to just six months behind the most advanced models from the US.
DeepSeek, developed by a research lab in Hangzhou, is emerging as a serious challenger to US-based AI giants like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude AI—all created with far larger budgets. Its latest models, DeepSeek V3 (a 671-billion parameter "mixture of experts" model) and DeepSeek R1 (an advanced reasoning model), have put it at the forefront of the field, marking it as a potential powerhouse in both finance and technology.
How Much of a Disruptor Is DeepSeek?
As of Monday, DeepSeek V3 was the most downloaded app on the Apple Store in the US—an unprecedented achievement for a Chinese-developed chatbot. This success has raised questions about how effectively US tech companies have invested their billions into AI development. Even if DeepSeek's rise proves temporary, its ability to deliver high-quality AI with a fraction of the financial and technological resources available to Western firms is already an eye-opener.
To put this in perspective, DeepSeek's creators claim that the V3 model was trained with under $6 million—although some analysts believe the final cost could exceed $1 billion when including earlier development phases.
