The little-known artificial intelligence firm has emphasized research, even as it emerged as the brainchild of a hedge fund.

Chinese tech startup DeepSeek released a model of its AI service that seemingly is on-par with U.S.-based competitors like ChatGPT, but required far-less computing power.

DeepSeek's innovative techniques, cost-efficient solutions and optimization strategies have forced established players to re-evaluate their approaches.

When Chinese quant hedge fund founder Liang Wenfeng went into AI research, he took 10,000 Nvidia chips and assembled a team of young, ambitious talent. Two years later, DeepSeek exploded on the scene.

DeepSeek, a Hangzhou-based startup founded in 2023, shot to the top of Apple’s App Store free app chart after releasing a new open-source AI model it says rivals OpenAI's work. Its website was hit by outages amid a spike in interest.

DeepSeek’s ChatGPT competitor quickly soared to the top of the App Store, and the company is disrupting financial markets, with shares of Nvidia dipping 17 percent to cut nearly $600 billion from its market cap on January 27th, which CNBC said is the biggest single-day drop in US history.

Here’s what you need to know about DeepSeek, the Chinese AI startup that rattled markets as its app dethroned OpenAI's as the most-downloaded free app in the U.S. on Apple.

Alibaba claims that its Qwen2.5-Max artificial intelligence model outperformed its rivals at OpenAI, Meta and DeepSeek.