Early this year, China-based DeepSeek rocked the generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) scene with the release of its R1 model, a low-cost, high-performance solution that directly challenged OpenAI’s and other industry leaders’ hegemony.
A small number of AI assistants, such as Google’s Gemini, Anthropic’s Claude, and OpenAI’s ChatGPT, have controlled the market since late 2022 as a result of multibillion-dollar investments in data centers, engineers, and state-of-the-art AI chips.
But the status quo was upset when DeepSeek unveiled the R1 model, which it claimed only cost $6 million. The R1 model, which was powered by less sophisticated CPUs, generated a lot of discussion in the industry.
