(1) For the Google AI mode, see
Deep Think.
(2) A family of open-source generative AI chatbots from China-based DeepSeek. Funded in 2023 by Chinese hedge fund High-Flyer, DeepSeek operates as a separate company. Early models were released the same year.
At the end of 2024, DeepSeek-R1 created a frenzy in the American AI community because its development cost was a fraction of what American companies spend on training models. Although some experts doubted the cost was that low, AI-related stocks in the U.S. took a tumble as the publicity began to spread.
Subsequent versions of DeepSeek continue to improve. For example, DeepSeek V4.1-Flash, released in September 2026, is a smaller model that outperforms the previous version. In addition, because the U.S. has placed restrictions on American GPUs going to China, DeepSeek models are increasingly developed with Huawei's own chips and proprietary parallel processing methods. They also require less memory and storage than American models. See
Ascend chip and
Huawei.
Like ChatGPT
Users in the U.S. can sign up and ask questions just like ChatGPT. When a senior reporter at PCMag.com put both chatbots to the same tests, the results were pretty much even, although DeepSeek provided more sources for information than ChatGPT. However, when asked sensitive questions about Taiwan, Tiananmen Square and Uyghur human rights, DeepSeek responded with government-approved comments.
DeepSeek Versions
The first DeepSeek model was DeepSeek-Coder, followed by V designations: DeepSeek-V1, V2, V2.5, V2-Lite, V3-Base, V3, V4-Pro and V4-Flash.