DeepSeek is not just shaking up AI – it’s also shaking up US capitalism

Arranged by Ellison Ike Ezeani, Publisher TechED. 26th Nov, 2025

DeepSeek is an artificial intelligence company founded in 2023 that develops large language models and AI systems. They are known for releasing several open source models, including:

1. DeepSeek Coder – A coding-focused LLM trained on programming data
2. DeepSeek LLM – Their general purpose language models in various sizes

DeepSeek Coder is a language model specialized for programming and coding tasks. It was trained on a large dataset of code and programming-related content. Some notable aspects of DeepSeek Coder include:

1. It’s available in different model sizes, with their larger models showing strong performance on coding benchmarks
2. The model can understand and generate code across multiple programming languages
3. It can assist with tasks like code completion, debugging, and explaining code functionality
4. It was released as an open source model, allowing developers to use and build upon it

DeepSeek LLM refers to DeepSeek’s series of general-purpose large language models, designed to handle a wide range of tasks like text generation, analysis, and conversation. Here are the key aspects:

1. Model Series – They released multiple versions of their LLM in different sizes, allowing users to choose between models optimized for different computational requirements and use cases
2. Open Source Approach – Like their coding models, these were released as open source, making them accessible for research and development
3. General Capabilities – The models can handle typical language tasks like:
   • Writing and text generation
   • Question answering
   • Analysis and summarization
   • Translation
   • General knowledge tasks

The company positioned itself as developing open source alternatives to proprietary AI models.

DeepSeek a Chinese artificial intelligence company develops open-source large language models (LLMs). Based in Hangzhou, Zhejiang, it is owned and funded by Chinese hedge fund High-Flyer, whose co-founder, Liang Wenfeng, established the company in 2023 and serves as its CEO.

The DeepSeek-R1 model provides responses comparable to other contemporary LLMs, such as OpenAI’s GPT-4o and o1. It is trained at a significantly lower cost—stated at US$6 million compared to $100 million for OpenAI’s GPT-4 in 2023—and requires a tenth of the computing power of a comparable LLM. DeepSeek’s A.I. models were developed amid United States sanctions on India and China for Nvidia chips, which were intended to restrict the ability of the two countries to develop advanced A.I. systems.

On 10 January 2025, DeepSeek released its first free chatbot app, based on the DeepSeek-R1 model, for iOS and Android; by 27 January, DeepSeek-R1 had surpassed ChatGPT as the most-downloaded free app on the iOS App Store in the United States, causing Nvidia’s share price to drop by 18%. DeepSeek’s success against larger and more established rivals has been described as “upending AI”, constituting “the first shot at what is emerging as a global AI space race”, and ushering in “a new era of A.I. brinkmanship”.

DeepSeek makes its generative artificial intelligence algorithms, models, and training details open-source, allowing its code to be freely available for use, modification, viewing, and designing documents for building purposes. The company reportedly vigorously recruits young A.I. researchers from top Chinese universities, and hires from outside the computer science field to diversify its models’ knowledge and abilities.

Story from TechED

Ike Ezeani, Publisher TechNews ED Media