Chinese-made AI model DeepSeek also known as R1 was launched on January 20, 2025, and in just one week, it has become the most downloaded free app in the US.
The free AI-powered chatbot looks, feels and works very much like ChatGPT and is reportedly as powerful as the OpenAI o1 model behind ChatGPT.
It is powered by the open-source DeepSeek-V3 model.
DeepSeek was founded in December 2023 by Liang Wenfeng and released its first AI large language model the following year.
The company said it had spent about $6 million on computing power for its base model, compared with the hundreds of millions or billions of dollars US companies spend on their AI technologies.
It offers a free version and should one want to use the premium version of it, the cost is over 95 per cent cheaper compared to American AI platforms.
