Deepseek: the Chinese company that is surprising the AI world

Imagine a small team with a modest budget challenging big tech companies like OpenAI and Google. This is exactly what Deepseek, a Chinese AI company, has done. With an investment of only $6 million, they have developed an AI model that not only performs impressively, but is also available to everyone for free.

The beginning of Deepseek: from trading to AI

In 2007, three engineers met at a Chinese university. During the financial crisis, they began using machine learning for stock trading. This eventually led to the creation of High-Flyer in 2015. High-Flyer traded with algorithms and managed as much as $15 billion by 2021.

But then things went wrong for High-Flyer. Large losses and stricter regulations from the Chinese government forced the team to move in a new direction. In 2023, they decided to apply their knowledge and technology to artificial intelligence, and thus Deepseek was born.

A different approach: smart instead of big

Instead of relying on gigantic data sets and expensive models, Deepseek chose a smart, cost-saving strategy. They had their AI model train itself by trial and error, similar to how AlphaGo once kept playing endless chess against itself to learn it.

The result? Their model went from an accuracy of 15.6% to 86.7% in solving complex problems. This innovative approach also immediately shows that you don't have to invest billions to get great results.

Why Deepseek is getting so much attention

When Deepseek v3 was released last week on OpenRouter, a platform where developers can test AI models, things went fast. Within two days, Deepseek became the most popular model for programming tasks, even more popular than big names like GPT-4o and Claude 3.5.

What makes Deepseek unique is its "DeepThink" feature. This allows you to see exactly how the AI 'thinks' and makes decisions. This level of transparency is unique and offers marketers and developers greater control and understanding of how AI works.

Below is an example of the thinking process in Deepseek.

China and the rise of open source AI

Deepseek is not the only Chinese AI project that stands out. Alibaba's Qwen models have record downloads on platforms such as Hugging Face and outperform comparable Western models at a fraction of the cost. China is also positioning itself as a strong competitor in video AI, with models such as Hunyuan. This trend shows that AI is no longer only accessible to companies with huge budgets. Thanks to initiatives such as Deepseek, even smaller companies can benefit from complex AI tools.

While China is making impressive strides in the AI market with initiatives such as Deepseek and Qwen, there are also concerns about privacy and data security. The close ties between Chinese technology companies and the government raise questions about how data is collected and used. Open source models offer transparency, but processing sensitive data remains a risk, especially without strict adherence to international privacy standards such as GDPR. So it is up to companies themselves to take a critical look at what tools they use to strike a balance between innovation and data protection.

What does this mean for marketers?

For marketers, Deepseek offers new opportunities. Whether you want to personalize campaigns, better analyze data or deploy smart automation, Deepseek makes it accessible and achievable. Because it is free, it gives small and medium-sized companies the opportunity to compete with larger players.

Want to know how Deepseek can improve your marketing? This Friday, we'll show Deepseek live in action during our webinar Marketing AI in the Prairie.

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