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By Theo Burman
Live News Reporter
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Chinese startup DeepSeek overtook ChatGPT to become the top-rated free application on Apple's App Store in the U.S. on Monday.
DeepSeek, a Chinese artificial intelligence tool, has become one of the most popular apps in the U.S., beating the chatbot from American firm OpenAI.
Newsweek contacted DeepSeek for comment on this story via email.
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Why It Matters
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has previously warned against Chinese control over the future of AI.
President Donald Trump recently announced the launch of Stargate, a Texas-based initiative that combines some of the leading figures in artificial intelligence in an attempt to keep the industry under U.S. control. Altman will play a major role in Stargate.
Newsweek contacted the White House via email on Monday for comment.
What To Know
ChatGPT, which was previously the most popular AI chatbot on the market in the U.S., fell behind DeepSeek's free app on Monday, with the Apple App Store reporting that it was now the top-rated free app on the platform, according to Reuters.
DeepSeek explicitly advertises itself on its website as "rivaling OpenAI's Model o1," making the clash between the two models all the more significant in the AI arms race.
DeepSeek's prominence came to light as the U.S. government continues to enforce export controls designed to restrict China's access to advanced semiconductor technology critical for AI training.
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These measures, expanded in 2021, are aimed at preventing Chinese firms from acquiring high-performance chips like Nvidia's A100 and H100, often used for developing large-scale AI models.
However, researchers at DeepSeek stated in a recent paper that the DeepSeek-V3 model was trained using Nvidia's H800 chips, a less advanced alternative not covered by the restrictions.
They also reported training costs of less than $6 million. While some experts have questioned these claims, the report has raised questions about the effectiveness of current U.S. policies in curbing China's AI advancements.
DeepSeek was founded in Hangzhou in 2023, a year that saw increased AI innovation across China. While other Chinese companies have introduced large-scale AI models, DeepSeek is one of the only ones that has successfully broken into the U.S. market.
What People Are Saying
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman wrote in an op-ed published in 2024 by The Washington Post: "We face a strategic choice about what kind of world we are going to live in: Will it be one in which the United States and allied nations advance a global AI that spreads the technology's benefits and opens access to it, or an authoritarian one, in which nations or movements that don't share our values use AI to cement and expand their power?"
What Happens Next
DeepSeek's rise in popularity is expected to prompt a response from U.S. industry leaders, as well as the White House, which has taken a more proactive approach to AI under the new administration.
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