The US President Donald Trump has cautioned that the rise of DeepSeek, a famous artificial intelligence model like ChatGPT from China, is a “wake-up call for Silicon Valley.
The unveiling of the latest DeepSeek model, R1, last week gained limited notice, eclipsed by Donald Trump’s inauguration. But now, DeepSeek’s chatbot rises to be the most downloaded free app on Apple’s US App Store, replacing OpenAI’s ChatGPT.
The rise of Chinese artificial intelligence start-ups jolted US tech biggies’ stocks on Monday amid tensions that the new inexpensive AI model would disrupt their control.
Tech shares dived, and chipmaker Nvidia suffered a drop of almost 17% on Monday. Nvidia’s fall in share price tagged as the biggest ever one-day plummet in market value on Wall Street, of nearly 589 billion dollars.
Just a week after its release, DeepSeek swiftly became the most downloaded free app in the US. It asserted that its large language AI model was made at a fraction of the expense of its opponents, including OpenAI, which uses more costly Nvidia chips to prepare its systems on immense stretches of data.
Reacting to this, Donald Trump on Monday said the DeepSeek launch should be a wake-up call for our industries that we need to be laser-focused on striving to win.”
The US president claimed it could be a “positive” for the country’s tech companies and added, “Instead of outlaying billions and billions, you’ll spend less, and you’ll come up with hopefully the same solution.”.
OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman wrote in a post on X it was “legit invigorating to have a new competitor,” calling DeepSeek’s R1 “an impressive model, specifically around what they’re able to deliver for the price.” He vowed to speed up some OpenAI launches.
This progress comes amid a US government shove to ban Chinese-owned TikTok in the United States. The development is immensely providing the AI boom, initiated by ChatGPT’s launch in the end of 2022, has promoted Nvidia to become one of the world’s most valuable companies.
David Sacks, Trump’s AI advisor and significant tech investor, said DeepSeek’s success validated the White House’s decision to revert the executive orders, issued under Joe Biden, that established safety standards for AI development.
The norms “would have hamstrung American AI companies without any guarantee that China would follow suit,” Sacks wrote on X.
Adam Kovacevich, CEO of the tech industry trade group Chamber of Progress, voiced that, “Now the top AI concern has to be ensuring the US wins.”
