Donald Trump thinks the Chinese startup DeepSeek, which claims it has a technical advantage over US rivals, should be “a wakeup call” for American AI firms.
DeepSeek says its artificial intelligence models are comparable with those from US giants, like OpenAI which is behind ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini, but potentially a fraction of the cost.
That has triggered a fall in various US shares, especially chipmaker Nvidia which registered a record one-day loss for any company on Wall Street.
But the US president believes the success of the Chinese firm could be helpful to America’s AI aspirations.
“The release of DeepSeek, AI from a Chinese company should be a wakeup call for our industries that we need to be laser-focused on competing to win,” Mr Trump said in Florida.
He pointed to DeepSeek’s ability to use fewer computing resources. “I view that as a positive, as an asset… you won’t be spending as much, and you’ll get the same result, hopefully,” he added.
On Monday, the DeepSeek assistant had surpassed ChatGPT in downloads from Apple’s app store.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has given his rival some acknowledgement in a post on X, reacting to DeepSeek’s R1 “reasoning” model – a core part of the AI technology which answers questions.
“DeepSeek’s r1 is an impressive model, particularly around what they’re able to deliver for the price,” he wrote.
But Mr Altman was also defiant: “We will obviously deliver much better models and also it’s legit invigorating to have a new competitor! we will pull up some releases.”
