How Chinese AI Startup DeepSeek Made a Model that Rivals OpenAI

On January 20, DeepSeek, a relatively unknown AI research lab from China, released an open source model that’s quickly become the talk of the town in Silicon Valley. According to a paper authored by the company, DeepSeek-R1 beats the industry’s leading models like OpenAI o1 on several math and reasoning benchmarks. In fact, on many metrics that matter—capability, cost, openness—DeepSeek is giving Western AI giants a run for their money. DeepSeek’s success points to an unintended outcome of the tech cold war between the US and China. US export controls...