The latest artificial intelligence (AI) Models introduced by Chinese startup DeepSeek have caused a stir in the tech sector after emerging as a potential competitor to leading US firms.

DeepSeek wrote in an article last month that it trained the DeepSeek-V3 model on less than $6 million worth of computing power from 2,000 Nvidia H800 chips to achieve performance levels on par with OpenAI and Meta's most advanced models. .

These chips are less advanced than the most advanced chips on the market, which are subject to export controls, although DeepSeek claims to overcome this shortcoming with innovative AI training techniques. DeepSeek's AI assistant is equipped with the DeepSeek-V3 model OpenAI's ChatGPT As the top-rated free app in the Apple App Store in the US

The emergence of the China-based firm has raised questions about the billions of dollars invested by leading US tech companies in advanced chips and large data centers used to train AI models. It also serves as a “Sputnik moment” for the AI ​​race between the US and China, following the conclusion that the US has an advantage over its geopolitical rival in the emerging field.

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DeepSeek's AI assistant has topped OpenAI's ChatGPT in the Apple App Store. (Image credit via Christoph Dernbach/Getty Images/Getty Images)

The quality of DeepSeek's models and reported cost-effectiveness have changed that story China's AI firms They outpace their US counterparts, starting with the release of the first Chinese ChatGPT equivalent by Baidu.

The DeepSeek-R1 model was released last week, and according to a post on the company's official WeChat account, using OpenAI's o1 model is 20 to 50 times cheaper, depending on the task.

The R1 model is also open source and free for users, while OpenAI's ChatGPT Pro Plan costs $200 per month.

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DeepSeek says its model outperformed the latest OpenAI and Anthropic models at a fraction of the cost. (Getty Images/Getty Images)

DeepSeek was founded in late 2023 after its quantitative co-founder, controlling shareholder Liang Wenfeng. hedge fund High-Flyer moved to create a “new and independent group to investigate the nature of (artificial general intelligence).”

Artificial general intelligence (AGI) is also a goal set by OpenAI, which defines AGI as autonomous systems that outperform humans in the most economically valuable tasks.

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Reuters contributed to this report.