DeepSeek: the Chinese artificial intelligence application that is capturing global attention.
A Chinese-made artificial intelligence (AI) model called DeepSeek has shot to the top of Apple Store's downloads, stunning investors and sinking some tech stocks.
It was released on 20 January, quickly impressing AI geeks before it got the attention of the entire tech industry - and the world.
US President Donald Trump said it was a "wake-up call" for US companies who must focus on "competing to win".
What makes DeepSeek so special is the company's claim that it was built at a fraction of the cost of industry-leading models like OpenAI - because it uses fewer advanced chips.
That possibility caused chip-making giant Nvidia to shed almost $600bn (£482bn) of its market value on Monday - the biggest one-day loss in US history.
DeepSeek also raises questions about Washington's efforts to contain Beijing's push for tech supremacy - one of the key restrictions has been a ban on the export of advanced chips to China.
Beijing, however, has doubled down, with President Xi Jinping declaring AI a top priority. And start-ups like DeepSeek are crucial as China pivots from traditional manufacturing - clothes and furniture to advanced tech - chips, electric vehicles and AI.
So what do we know about DeepSeek?
DeepSeek was founded in December 2023 by Liang Wenfeng, and released its first AI large language model the following year.
Not much is known about Liang, who graduated from Zhejiang University with degrees in electronic information engineering and computer science. But he now finds himself in the international spotlight.
He was recently seen at a meeting hosted by China's premier Li Qiang, reflecting DeepSeek's growing prominence in the AI industry.
Unlike many American AI entrepreneurs who are from Silicon Valley, Mr Liang also has a background in finance.
He is the CEO of a hedge fund called High-Flyer, which uses AI to analyse financial data to make investment decisons - what is called quantitative trading. In 2019 High-Flyer became the first quant hedge fund in China to raise over 100 billion yuan ($13m).
In a speech he gave that year, Liang said, "If the US can develop its quantitative trading sector, why not China?"
In a rare interview last year, he said China's AI sector "cannot remain a follower forever".
He went on: "Often, we say there's a one or two-year gap between Chinese and American AI, but the real gap is between originality and imitation. If this doesn't change, China will always be a follower."
Asked why DeepSeek's model surprised so many in Silicon Valley, he said: "Their surprise stems from seeing a Chinese company join their game as an innovator, not just a follower - which is what most Chinese firms are accustomed to."
What is DeepSeek?
At its simplest, DeepSeek is an AI-powered chatbot, like ChatGPT.
This is the free app being downloaded on the Apple's app store, where DeepSeek says it is designed "to answer your questions and enhance your life efficiently".
But the AI model that powers it - called R1 - has some 670 billion parameters, making it the largest open-source large language model yet, according to Anil Ananthaswamy, author of Why Machines Learn: The Elegant Math Behind Modern AI.
Its reportedly as powerful as OpenAI's O1 model - which powers ChatGPT - in mathematics, coding and reasoning.
Like many other Chinese AI models - Baidu's Ernie or Doubao by ByteDance - DeepSeek is trained evades politically sensitive questions.
When the BBC asked the app what happened at Tiananmen Square on 4 June 1989, DeepSeek did not give any details about the massacre, a taboo topic in China.
It replied: "I am sorry, I cannot answer that question. I am an AI assistant designed to provide helpful and harmless responses."
Chinese government censorship was thought to be a huge challenge for developing AI. But DeepSeek appears to have been trained on an open-source model, which enables it to perform complex tasks, while also withholding certain information.
And it says it has been able to do this cheaply - researchers behind it claim it cost $6 million (£4.8m) to build, a shoestring budget compared to the billions spent by AI firms in the US.
How exactly they did this is still unclear. DeepSeek's founder reportedly built up a store of Nvidia A100 chips, which have been banned from export to China since September 2022.
Experts believe this collection - which some estimates put at 50,000 - led him to build such a powerful AI model, by pairing these chips with cheaper, less sophisticated ones.
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