The Economist.
At the start of 2025, a little-known Chinese firm threw a gauntlet at the feet of Silicon Valley’s tech bros.
The rise of Chinese AI chatbot DeepSeek has taken the world by storm.
DeepSeek and I are new best friends.
It’s an upstart, it’s only been around for about a year or so.
It is mind-blowing and it is shaking this entire industry to its core.
DeepSeek claimed that in just two months it had created a chatbot
that could rival OpenAI’s ChatGPT, but at a fraction of the cost.
And as DeepSeek’s free app shot to the top of download charts,
tech investors panicked and billions were wiped off
the market value of chip designer Nvidia.
OpenAI’s Sam Altman called the competition invigorating,
but a freshly re-elected Donald Trump saw it as a call to arms.
The release of DeepSeek AI from a Chinese company should be a wake-up call for our industries
that we need to be laser-focused on competing to win.
I’m Sarah Wu, The Economist’s China correspondent,
and this week I’m joined by our AI writer Alex Hern
to ask whether the DeepSeek moment has turned into a DeepSeek year,
and where does Chinese AI go from here?
This is Drum Tower from The Economist.