DeepSeek is a Chinese AI company founded in 2023. It develops open - source large language models (LLMs). Despite its young age, it has made a big splash. In January 2025, its chatbot app, based on the DeepSeek - R1 model, became a hit. It surpassed ChatGPT in downloads on the iOS App Store in the US. Trained at a much lower cost of $6 million compared to $100 million for GPT - 4 in 2023, it offers high - quality AI services, making waves in the global AI community.