What is DeepSeek? The startup AI app surging in downloads

This photo illustration shows the DeepSeek app on a mobile phone in Beijing on January 27, 2025. (Photo by GREG BAKER/AFP via Getty Images)

A Chinese AI startup is gaining popularity, amassing tons of downloads shortly after the app’s debut. 

What is DeepSeek?

The backstory:

DeepSeek is a Chinese AI startup that was founded in 2023 by Liang Wenfeng, the chief of AI-driven quant hedge fund High-Flyer. The app is different from other chatbots, including OpenAI’s ChatGPT because DeepSeek can explain its reasoning before delivering a response to a prompt. 

The company debuted R1, a specialized model designed for complex problem-solving, on Jan. 20, and was built quickly, with fewer, less powerful AI chips, at a lower cost than other U.S. models, FOX Business reported, citing the Wall Street Journal.

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Bloomberg reported that the company’s R1 release offers performance on par with OpenAI’s latest and has granted license for people interested in creating chatbots using the technology to build on it.

DeepSeek’s app grew in popularity and has been downloaded in global app stores 1.6 million times by Jan. 25 in the U.S. The app ranks first in iPhone app stores in Australia, Canada, China, Singapore, the U.S. and the U.K.  FOX Business noted that unlike ChatGPT and other major AI competitors, DeepSeek is open-source, meaning developers can offer their own improvements on the software.

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What they're saying:

Experts told the Wall Street Journal that DeepSeek’s technology is still behind OpenAI and Google. However, it is a close competitor despite using less-advanced chips, and isn’t using as many steps that some U.S. developers believe are vital. 

According to the Wall Street Journal, two models of DeepSeek were ranked in the top 10 on Chatbot Arena, a platform hosted by University of California, Berkeley researchers that rates chatbot performance.

DeepSeek’s flagship model is free, but the organization charges users who connect their own applications to DeepSeek’s model and computing framework, the Wall Street Journal reported. 

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