DeepSeek's breakthrough emboldens open-source AI models like Meta's Llama
DeepSeek's powerful new artificial intelligence model isn't just a win for China — it's a victory for open-source versions of the tech from the likes of Meta, Databricks, Mistral and Hugging Face, according to industry experts who spoke with CNBC.
Last month, DeepSeek released R1, an open-source reasoning model that claims to rival the performance of OpenAI's o1 model using a cheaper, less energy-intensive process.
The development caused the market values of Nvidia and other chipmakers to plummet on fears that it could lead to reduced spending on high-performance computing infrastructure.
DeepSeek is a Chinese AI lab that focuses on developing large language models with the ultimate aim of achieving artificial general intelligence, or AGI. It was founded in 2023 by Liang Wenfeng, co-founder of AI-focused quantitative hedge fund High-Flyer.
AGI loosely refers to the idea of an AI that equals or surpasses human intellect on a wide range of tasks.
Since OpenAI's ChatGPT burst onto the scene in November 2022, AI researchers have been working hard to understand and improve upon the advances of the foundational large language model technology that underpins it.
One area of focus for many labs has been open-source AI. Open source refers to software whose source code is made freely available on the open web for possible modification and redistribution.
Plenty of firms from tech giants like Meta to scrappier startups such as Mistral and Hugging Face have been betting on open-source as a way to improve on the technology while also sharing important developments with the wider research community.
DeepSeek's technological breakthrough has only made the case for open-source AI models stronger, according to some tech executives.
Seena Rejal,