Remember the “DeepSeek moment?” The Chinese start-up announced in early 2025 that it had created an artificial intelligence model that could rival ChatGPT. Not only that, it had created it at a fraction of the cost of its American competitors.
If China had been considered behind the United States on A.I., DeepSeek changed that. Almost instantly, its model became the most downloaded free app in the U.S. Some in Silicon Valley started calling it “A.I.’s Sputnik moment.”
DeepSeek released its latest model last week. Today, my colleague Meaghan Tobin, who covers technology in Asia, writes about how DeepSeek’s models have not just put China and the U.S. neck and neck in the A.I. race — but revolutionized the nature of the race itself.
