Chinese firm DeepSeek has shaken the AI industry by slashing a trillion dollars from tech giants’ valuations almost overnight. Its new large language model, R1, stands out for its resource-efficient approach: it was trained on older chips, skipped some traditionally costly steps, and is offered as open source. This drastically reduces production expenses compared to established models like GPT-4. Analysts see it as a turning point in a field previously dominated by high-end hardware and billion-dollar budgets.
DeepSeek’s quick rise has triggered both admiration and concern, highlighted by reported censorship issues and cyber attacks aimed at its servers. While existing users continue to explore R1’s capabilities, registration is currently limited to Chinese phone numbers. The event signifies a broader push toward more accessible AI development, potentially reshaping global research and competition in ways few anticipated just weeks ago.