Athira Sethu
Kochi, 30 January 2025
DeepSeek is a Chinese AI startup that has recently gained attention for its powerful language models, which are free to use and offer an alternative to models from major companies like OpenAI and Meta. Founded in 2023, DeepSeek specializes in creating open-source large language models (LLMs) that can perform a wide range of tasks, from coding to problem-solving.
In December 2024, the company reached major recognition as it launched its DeepSeek V3 model that had surpassed the rest in different tests conducted, including those of OpenAI, Meta, and Anthropic. DeepSeek V3 proved capable of solving mathematical problems, writing code efficiently, and even finding errors in the code, things many AI models struggle to do. Just two weeks later, the company launched another model, DeepSeek R1, which impressed experts with its reasoning skills and ability to solve complex problems.
One of the most surprising things about DeepSeek is its low cost. While OpenAI’s GPT-4 cost around $100 million to develop, DeepSeek built its models with only $5.58 million. It also uses older graphics chips from Nvidia, which are cheaper and less powerful than the latest models, yet DeepSeek has still been able to deliver strong performance.
DeepSeek’s price is another reason why it stands out from the rest. It charges at $0.55 per million input tokens and $2.19 per million output tokens, much cheaper than its competitors such as OpenAI, which charges $15 for input and $60 for output. The cost difference has attracted concerns among companies in the United States, and some of them fear that low-cost models developed by DeepSeek may cause disruptions in the market.
The company also has its commitment to open-source technology. DeepSeek publicly provides its models free of charge to researchers and enterprises alike, which opposed the move by OpenAI to a for-profit model. It enables developers anywhere in the world to use these AI models, improving innovation.
The rise of DeepSeek is taking place in a very tense political environment, where the U.S. and China are competing to gain dominance in technology. Sanctions by the U.S. against Chinese companies have made it hard for them to access advanced chips, but DeepSeek has made the most of the resources available to them.
