DeepSeek

Hangzhou DeepSeek Artificial Intelligence Basic Technology Research Co., Ltd., doing business as DeepSeek, is a Chinese artificial intelligence company that develops large language models (LLMs). Based in Hangzhou, Zhejiang, it is owned and funded by the Chinese hedge fund High-Flyer. DeepSeek was founded in July 2023 by Liang Wenfeng, the co-founder of High-Flyer, who also serves as the CEO for both companies. The company launched an eponymous chatbot alongside its DeepSeek-R1 model in January 2025.

Released under the MIT License, DeepSeek-R1 provides responses comparable to other contemporary large language models, such as OpenAI's GPT-4 and o1. Its training cost is reported to be significantly lower than other LLMs. The company claims that it trained its V3 model for US$6 million—far less than the US$100 million cost for OpenAI's GPT-4 in 2023—and using approximately one-tenth the computing power consumed by Meta's comparable model, Llama 3.1. DeepSeek's success against larger and more established rivals has been described as "upending AI".

DeepSeek's models are described as "open weight," meaning the exact parameters are openly shared, although certain usage conditions differ from typical open-source software. The company reportedly recruits AI researchers from top Chinese universities and also hires from outside traditional computer science fields to broaden its models' knowledge and capabilities.

DeepSeek significantly reduced training expenses for their R1 model by incorporating techniques such as mixture of experts (MoE) layers. The company also trained its models during ongoing trade restrictions on AI chip exports to China, using weaker AI chips intended for export and employing fewer units overall. Observers say this breakthrough sent "shock waves" through the industry, threatening established AI hardware leaders such as Nvidia; Nvidia's share price dropped sharply, losing US$600 billion in market value, the largest single-company decline in U.S. stock market history.