The market has been surprised by the accomplishments of the recently released R1 reasoning model. In addition, the Chinese startup has open-sourced its models while revealing in its R1 research paper that the highly sophisticated AI was trained at a fraction of the cost of OpenAI’s o1, which caused the stocks of several big tech companies to plummet.
It took a while, but OpenAI’s CEO Sam Altman finally posted about the DeepSeek hype, saying he’s excited to “have a new competitor.” Here’s what he wrote: “DeepSeek’s R1 is an impressive model, particularly around what they’re able to deliver for the price. We will obviously deliver much better models and also it’s legit invigorating to have a new competitor. We will pull up some releases.”
BGR tends to believe that the new releases could have something to do with the already unveiled o3 model, which should be formally announced in the coming days or weeks.
Altman continued his response: “Mostly, we are excited to continue executing our research roadmap and believe more computing is more important now than ever before to succeed at our mission. The world is going to want to use a LOT of AI and really be quite amazed by the next gen models coming. Looking forward to bringing you all AGI and beyond.”
That being said, even though OpenAI has several announcements to counter DeepSeek, they have a major difference. The Chinese startup only uses 3% to 5% of the resources OpenAI needs for similar progress with ChatGPT.
One of the problems with the current AI software concerns the cost of developing and using the product. Advanced models like o1 can cost tens of millions to develop. The process requires high-end graphics cards (GPU) that provide the necessary computing power and energy expenditures.
That’s why finished products like ChatGPT o1 can’t be available for free without limitations. Companies like OpenAI need to cover costs and turn a profit. On the other hand, DeekpSeek researchers took another approach for R1, finding ways to train an advanced reasoning model without access to the same hardware.
It’s not just that, but DeepSeek made access to R1 much cheaper than OpenAI’s ChatGPT, which is a significant development. Add in the open-source nature of DeepSeek models, and you can see why developers would flock to test the Chinese firm’s AI and why DeepSeek would surge in the App Store.
