What if Deepseek was about to shake up the established order? The Chinese Chatgpt rival has taken the analysts shortly by its ability to match the performance of its main American competitors, which have so far dominated artificial intelligence (AI). What alarm world scholarships: in Wall Street, the Nasdaq index, predominantly technological, fell 3.07 % on Monday, January 27, while the S&P 500 dropped 1.46 % and the Dow Jones resisted + 0.65 %. In Europe, Paris lost 0.27 %, Frankfurt 0.53 %and London remained in balance (+ 0.02 %).
While the application has climbed downloads on the App Store, Nvidia, a Californian giant of semiconductors necessary for the development of the generative AI, saw its action sink almost 17 % on Monday. During the session, the company has relieved $ 589 billion in market capitalization, one of the worst losses in history according to the American press. The American flea champion also left its place of first world capitalization, behind Apple and Microsoft. Several other American tech giants, which have invested billions of dollars in the development of artificial intelligence, have also plummeted like Microsoft (-2.14 %) and Alphabet (-4.20 %).
If the branch of semiconductors as a whole suffered on Monday, titles in the energy sector also collapsed in New York, Deepseek questioning the energy needs for the development of artificial intelligence.
A “Warning”, according to Donald Trump
As a reminder, Deepseek was designed by an eponymous start-up, based in Hangzhou (eastern China), a city known for its high concentration of technological companies. Released last week, its new generative AI model, R1, is considered as efficient as its American competitors. However, many analysts thought that the advantage of the United States in the production of high performance fleas, as well as their ability to limit China’s access to this technology, would guarantee their domination in terms of AI.
The breakthrough of the Chatgpt rival has in fact aroused strong reactions ranging from Silicon Valley to the White House. “I hope that the launch of the Deepseek artificial intelligence by a Chinese company will be a warning for our industrialists and will remind them that it is necessary to remain very focused on competition to win,” said US President Donald Trump on Monday, on Monday, Donald Trump said Speaking in front of elected officials from the Republican Party in Florida.
“It is very stimulating to have a new competitor,” said Sam Altman, the boss of Openai, qualifying the new Deepseek model of “impressive”. Especially since the Chinese start-up ensures that its development cost it only $ 5.6 million to compare with the billions spent by Openai, Microsoft, Google and other sector companies, especially in peak components. As the Express already wrote a few days ago, Deepseek’s forced sobriety has something to question the massive investments currently operated by the Americans.
A turning point like Sputnik
Marc Andreessen, an investor and close advisor to the American president Donald Trump, described Deepseek as a turning point “for AI”, as was “Spoutnik”, in reference to the launch of the Soviet satellite which had triggered the race for space During the Cold War. The Deepseek R1 model “is one of the most incredible breakthroughs I have ever seen,” he wrote on X.
Like its Western competitors, such as Chatgpt, Llama or Claude, Deepseek relies on a large model of language (LLM), formed from immense quantities of texts, to master the subtleties of natural language. But unlike these rivals, which develop proprietary models, Deepseek is in an open source code (“open source”). This means that the application code is accessible to everyone, making it possible to understand its operation and modify it.
One thing is certain: Deepseek should allow China to get closer to its dream, to become a leader in artificial intelligence by 2030. In the coming years, investments of several tens of billions of euros are planned in this domain. Deepseek’s success shows that Chinese companies are starting to overcome the obstacles they face. Last week, its founder Liang Wenfeng attended a meeting with Chinese Prime Minister Li Qiang, highlighting the rapid ascent of the company. This viral success has also propelled Deepseek at the top of trendy subjects on Weibo, the Chinese equivalent of X. “This shows that we can achieve great things with few means,” reacted a user. The United States is warned.