Chinese AI startup DeepSeek tops ChatGPT in Apple App Store by Reuters

BEIJING (Reuters) – Chinese startup DeepSeek’s AI assistant overtook rival ChatGPT to become the top-rated free app available on Apple’s (NASDAQ: ) App Store in the United States on Monday.

Driven by the DeepSeek-V3 model, which its creators say “tops the rankings among open-source models and rivals the most advanced closed-source models in the world,” the application of artificial intelligence has grown in popularity among US users since it was released on January. 10, according to app data research company Sensor Tower.

The milestone underscores how DeepSeek has left a deep impression on Silicon Valley, upending widely held views about the United States’ primacy in AI and the effectiveness of Washington’s export controls aimed at advanced capabilities of China’s chip and AI.

AI models from ChatGPT to DeepSeek require advanced chips to power their training. Since 2021, the Biden administration has expanded the scope of the bans designed to prevent these chips from being exported to China and used to train the AI ​​models of Chinese companies.

However, DeepSeek researchers wrote in a paper last month that the DeepSeek-V3 used Nvidia’s (NASDAQ: ) H800 chips for training, spending less than $6 million.

Although this detail has since been disputed, claims that the chips used were less powerful than Nvidia’s more advanced products that Washington sought to keep out of China, as well as relatively cheap training costs, prompted US technology leaders to question the effectiveness. of technology export controls.

Little is known about the company behind DeepSeek, a small Hangzhou-based startup founded in 2023, when search engine giant Baidu (NASDAQ: ) released China’s first broad-language AI model.

Since then, dozens of Chinese tech companies, large and small, have released their own AI models, but DeepSeek is the first to be praised by the US tech industry as matching or even surpassing the performance of US models cutting edge