What is DeepSeek? And How Is It Upending A.I.?

Tech stocks tumbled. Giant companies like Meta and Nvidia faced a barrage of questions about their future. Tech executives took to social media to proclaim their fears.

And it was all because of a little-known Chinese artificial intelligence start-up called DeepSeek.

DeepSeek caused waves all over the world on Monday as one of its accomplishments — that it had created a very powerful A.I. model with far less money than many A.I. experts thought possible — raised a host of questions, including whether U.S. companies were even competitive in A.I. anymore.

DeepSeek is “AI’s Sputnik moment,” Marc Andreessen, a tech venture capitalist, posted on social media on Sunday.

How could a company that few people had heard of have such an effect?

What is DeepSeek?

DeepSeek is a start-up founded and owned by the Chinese stock trading firm High-Flyer. Its goal is to build A.I. technologies along the lines of OpenAI’s ChatGPT chatbot or Google’s Gemini. By 2021, DeepSeek had acquired thousands of computer chips from the U.S. chipmaker Nvidia, which are a fundamental part of any effort to create powerful A.I. systems.

In China, the start-up is known for grabbing young and talented A.I. researchers from top universities, promising high salaries and an opportunity to work on cutting-edge research projects. Both High-Flyer and DeepSeek are run by Liang Wenfeng, a Chinese entrepreneur.