Hangzhou DeepSeek Artificial Intelligence Basic Technology Research Co., Ltd.
DeepSeek is a Chinese artificial intelligence company based in Hangzhou that develops large language models. Founded in July 2023 by Liang Wenfeng (梁文鋒), who also co-founded and leads the Chinese hedge fund High-Flyer (幻方), the company gained prominence in January 2025 with the release of its DeepSeek-R1 model. The company made headlines for developing AI models comparable to industry leaders like OpenAI’s GPT-4o but at a fraction of the cost—claiming to have trained its V3 model for just $6 million compared to GPT-4’s estimated $100 million. This cost efficiency, achieved partly in response to US restrictions on Nvidia chip exports to China, sent “shockwaves” through global markets, contributing to a historic $600 billion drop in Nvidia’s market value. DeepSeek’s models are released under MIT License as “open weight” software, though this provides less freedom for modification than true open-source alternatives.
