Chinese businesses rush to try DeepSeek AI at 'unprecedented' scale
BEIJING — Chinese businesses are tapping DeepSeek's newest artificial intelligence model to see how it can improve productivity.
The Chinese AI model took the world by storm in recent weeks after showcasing its reasoning process and claims to undercut rival OpenAI's ChatGPT on cost — despite U.S. restrictions on Chinese access to the advanced semiconductors needed to develop the tech.
Eight automakers including BYD, at least nine financial securities companies, three state-owned telecommunications operators and smartphone brand Honor are among the many that have rushed in the last week to integrate with DeepSeek. Cloud computing operators Alibaba, Huawei, Tencent and Baidu have all offered ways for clients to access DeepSeek's latest model.
«This is quite unprecedented,» Wei Sun, principal analyst of artificial intelligence at Counterpoint Research, said in an email Monday. She pointed to the rate of adoption, scale of business integration and breadth of specific industries covered.
«When we have all of these, we know it's making a big social and economic impact,» she said.
Optimism over artificial intelligence has spread to Chinese stocks. UBS said Wednesday that AI-related Chinese stocks are up by 15% since the start of the year, outperforming the broader MSCI China Index by 9%.
A big factor in the widespread interest is timing. DeepSeek released its latest R1 model on Jan. 20, and news of its low-cost reasoning capabilities prompted a global tech stock sell-off on Jan. 27 — just as millions of urban workers in China were returning to their hometowns to celebrate the eight-day Lunar New Year holiday.
As a result, less developed parts of China gained greater understanding of AI and its impact, a topic previously limited
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