ChatGPT rival had been building for days.
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At the World Economic Forum in Davos last week, some mentioned Hangzhou-based DeepSeek and its recently released R1 model as a prime reason for countries such as the US to be doubling down on AI advancements. On tech chat boards, engineers had begun comparing its programming performance to leading models from the likes of OpenAI and Microsoft Corp. Its product quietly rose through the ranks of top performers on a UC Berkeley-affiliated AI leaderboard.
Then, within the past 36 hours, interest in the startup exploded. Silicon Valley heavyweights including investor Marc Andreessen and AI godfather and chief Meta Platforms Inc. scientist Yann LeCun began piling into the conversation, with Andreessen calling DeepSeek’s model “one of the most amazing and impressive breakthroughs” he’s ever seen.
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By the end of the weekend, DeepSeek’s AI assistant had rocketed to the top of Apple Inc.’s iPhone download charts and ranked among the top downloads on Google’s Play Store, straining the startup’s systems so much that the service went down for more than an hour. The company was eventually forced to limit signups to those with mainland China telephone numbers — but claimed the move was the result