**DeepSeek’s Generative AI App Tops App Store as Free App No. 1**
Foreign media reports state that it is “developing more efficiently than major Silicon Valley companies” and question the effectiveness of advanced technology export controls targeting China.
According to Reuters on the 27th (local time), a Chinese startup’s AI model developed by DeepSeek has surpassed ChatGPT to take the number one spot in the free app ranking on the U.S. App Store.
DeepSeek released an R1 model, a fine-tuned version of their LLM called V3, which was unveiled in December last year. The model has been praised for achieving similar performance to American tech giants while using fewer GPUs, making it more efficient.
Sensor Tower, an app data research firm, highlighted that the AI app based on the DeepSeek-V3 model has rapidly gained popularity among U.S. users since its release, ranking as the top open-source model on the leaderboard and competing with the world’s most advanced models like ChatGPT.
The New York Times evaluated that DeepSeek’s competitive chatbot, created with fewer advanced chips than those used by American companies like OpenAI (ChatGPT developer) and Google, demonstrates the limitations of U.S. export restrictions.
According to a technical report detailing DeepSeek’s development process, the cost of developing DeepSeek-V3 was only $5.576 million (about 8 billion KRW). This cost was calculated based on renting NVIDIA’s H800 GPUs at $2 per hour for two months.
The U.S. has been expanding export restrictions on high-performance and AI chips amid a technology hegemony battle with China. Despite supply chain disruptions due to Western restrictions, China continues to produce advanced products, surprising the U.S.
Particularly, except for the large-scale model released by Chinese tech company Baidu, little is known about generative AI models. After Baidu released its model in 2023, dozens of Chinese tech companies launched their AI models. However, DeepSeek has been the first to receive accolades for matching or even surpassing the performance of state-of-the-art U.S. models, according to Reuters.
Reuters noted, “DeepSeek has left a strong impression on Silicon Valley, overturning views on the effectiveness of U.S. export controls targeting America’s AI superiority and China’s advanced chip and AI capabilities.”