DeepSeek, a Chinese-developed artificial intelligence model, has been the talk of the town because of its rapid rise to prominence surpassing established competitors like OpenAI’s ChatGPT.
The app has already gained over 2.6 million downloads on both Android and iOS devices with an estimated 5-6 million users worldwide, sending the stock market into a spiraling panic.
DeepSeek’s AI app is turning heads
The engineer and founder behind DeepSeek is 40-year-old Liang Wenfeng. He claims that China must “gradually transition” to being an initiator in the AI landscape “rather than continuing to ride on the coattails of others.”
And that’s what he did. As per research by QR code generator QR TIGER, DeepSeek is among the Top 10 free apps in the Apple App Store in 111 countries and downloaded over 1.9 million times while reaching over 1.2 million times on the Play Store.
On January 26, 2025, it climbed to the No. 1 spot on the US App Store, with daily active users increasing by over 110% compared to the week before.
Unsurprisingly, online interest is at an all-time high, with the total search volume for “deepseek” reaching 9.3 million in the last 30 days.
So, how has the recent launch of the DeepSeek-R1 model also managed to shake Wall Street? It uses less advanced chips than current industry leaders, which means it may cost less to make.
The mere speculation led to Nvidia, a leading chip-making giant, taking a massive hit to its market value—almost $600 billion. This ultimately spells chaos for stock markets worldwide, with Japan’s Softbank Group Corp, for instance, losing 8.3%.
US President Donald Trump describes it as a “wake-up call” for US companies that must keep “competing to win” against rivals.
This statement holds water as DeepSeek is estimated to amass a global user base of up to 6 million people and equal the daily searches of OpenAI’s ChatGPT in January 2025, underscoring its upward trajectory.
What the future holds for DeepSeek
DeepSeek’s latest advanced, open-source reasoning model, R1, has defied the limitations brought on by US semiconductor export controls and has quickly become one of the best AI products to date.
“DeepSeek significantly affects the current state of AI and tech by competing in open-source AI, kickstarting the race in AI developments including multimodal AI and advancements in AI democratization,” says Benjamin Claeys, CEO of QR TIGER.
DeepSeek’s sudden and impressive growth does not guarantee its fixed standing in the market. However, if marketed correctly, it has the potential to enter the mainstream.
Questions still remain surrounding the tech’s true cost, though Wenfeng maintains the company is not focused on making an enormous profit to keep offering the AI model at an affordable and competitive price.
It is still too early to draw conclusions about DeepSeek’s future, but its presence is an undeniably looming threat to Big Tech.