DeepSeek is the new AI chatbot on everybody’s lips and is currently sitting at the top of Apple’s App Store in the US and the UK. A completely free AI model built by a Chinese start-up, DeepSeek wants to make AI even more accessible to the masses by offering a competitor to OpenAI’s ChatGPT o1 reasoning model without a fee.

The startup DeepSeek was founded in 2023 in Hangzhou, China and released its first AI large language model later that year. Its CEO Liang Wenfeng previously co-founded one of China’s top hedge funds, High-Flyer, which focuses on AI-driven quantitative trading.

Competing with OpenAI’s o1, DeepSeek’s models scored higher on benchmarks and disrupted the AI market, sparking debates on U.S.-China tech dynamics.

DeepSeek’s AI assistant became the No. 1 downloaded free app on Apple’s iPhone store on Tuesday afternoon and its launch made Wall Street tech superstars' stocks tumble.

DeepSeek says its AI model is similar to US giants like OpenAI, despite fears of censorship around issues sensitive to Beijing

An AI-powered chatbot by the Chinese company DeepSeek has quickly become the most downloaded free app on Apple's store, following its January release in the US. The app has sparked chaos in the US markets and raised questions about the future of America's AI dominance.