What’s DeepSeek, China’s AI startup sending shockwaves through global tech?

Chip giant Nvidia shed nearly $600bn in market value after Chinese AI model cast doubt on supremacy of US tech firms. US President Donald Trump, who last week announced the launch of a $500bn AI initiative led by OpenAI, Texas-based Oracle and Japan’s SoftBank, said DeepSeek should serve as a “wake-up call” on the need for US industry to be “laser-focused on competing to win”. “How are these two companies now competitors?” In their research paper, DeepSeek’s engineers said they had used about 2,000 Nvidia H800 chips, which are less advanced than the most cutting-edge chips, to train its model. I think that for the US to retain its lead, Washington should focus on boosting Silicon Valley instead of on suppressing China.” Abraham, the former research director at Stability AI, said perceptions may also be skewed by the fact that, unlike DeepSeek, companies such as OpenAI have not made their most advanced models freely available to the public. This pay-walling of frontier AI models leads to people not truly grasping the progress and capabilities of AI.” Miller, the University of Queensland professor, said DeepSeek’s advances and other recent developments suggest that China is at least “up there” with the US in AI.