Chinese app DeepSeek hammers US tech stocks with cheaper open-source AI model [Video]

Chinese AI startup DeepSeek is gaining attention in Silicon Valley as the company appears to be nearly matching the capability of chatbots like OpenAI’s ChatGPT, but at a fraction of the development cost.

DeepSeek has surged in popularity in global app stores since the app was released earlier this month, having been downloaded1.6 million times by Jan. 25 in the U.S. and ranking No. 1 in iPhone app stores in Australia, Canada, China, Singapore, the U.S. and the U.K. Unlike ChatGPT and other major AI competitors, DeepSeek is open-source, allowing developers to offer their own improvements on the software.

The company unveiled R1, a specialized model designed for complex problem-solving, on Jan. 20, which “zoomed to the global top 10 in performance,” and was built far more rapidly, with fewer, less powerful AI chips, at a much lower cost than other U.S. models, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Meta’s Chief AI scientist, Yann LeCun, took to social media …