According to data by Sensor Tower, DeepSeek AI's mobile app, surpassed three million downloads since launch, with 80% of these occurring in the past week.
Outpacing its competitors, the AI app reached 300% more downloads compared with its competitors, such as Perplexity.
Many have expressed surprise at how DeepSeek, developed at a fraction of the cost of its rivals, has managed to achieve such success in a short time, competing with tech giants OpenAI, Google and Meta.
However, some industry leaders have even argued that DeepSeek could disrupt the current market dynamics and lead the way in making AI more accessible, but here's how the technology industry has reacted so far:
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OpenAI
Open AI CEO Sam Altman has praised the R1 model, branding it as “impressive”.
In a post on X, Altman said: "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.”
He added: “But mostly we are excited to continue to execute on our research roadmap and believe more computing is more important now than ever before to succeed at our mission.
“The world is going to use a LOT of AI, and really be quite amazed by the next-gen models coming.”
Perplexity AI
However, Perplexity AI co-founder, Aravind Srinvas, took to social media to address his concerns about DeepSeek’s data privacy policies, after a viral screenshot sparked debate.
Does this worry you? pic.twitter.com/CV4CXPzndS
— Amar Sheth (@AmarSheth) January 27, 2025
The screenshot revealed that DeepSeek collects user input and stores portions of it on servers in China, raising concerns about security and transparency.
In a LinkedIn post, Srinvas, stated: “All DeepSeek usage in Perplexity is through models hosted in data centres in the USA and Europe. DeepSeek is open-source. None of your data goes to China.”
Microsoft
Also taking to LinkedIn, Microsoft CEO, Satya Nadella states that "Jevons paradox is at play again," hinting at the idea that increased efficiency in production often drives greater demand.
He noted, "As AI becomes more efficient and accessible, its adoption will skyrocket, turning it into an essential commodity."
Intel
Pat Gelsinger, former CEO of Intel, continued: “It is clear that the DeepSeek team had numerous constraints and found creative ways to deliver a world-class solution in every respect at 10-50X lower costs.
“Export laws limited the available resources so, Chinese engineers needed to get creative and they did. They didn’t need $10B’s of hardware and the latest chips and a multi-$B training budget.
He added: “DeepSeek is an incredible piece of engineering that will usher in greater adoption of AI. It will help reset the industry in its view of Open innovation. It took a highly constrained team from China to remind us all of these fundamental lessons of computing history.”
Meta
Meanwhile, Yann LeCun, Meta's Chief AI Scientist, shared his thoughts on the topic in a LinkedIn post.
He wrote: “To people who see the performance of DeepSeek and think: "China is surpassing the US in AI." You are reading this wrong. The correct reading is: "Open source models are surpassing proprietary ones." DeepSeek has profited from open research and open source (e.g. PyTorch and Llama from Meta).
“They came up with new ideas and built them on top of other people's work. Because their work is published and open source, everyone can profit from it. That is the power of open research and open source.”
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