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DeepSeek's release of a synthetic intelligence design that might replicate the efficiency of OpenAI's o1 at a fraction of the cost has shocked financiers and analysts. Markets reeled as Nvidia, a microchip and AI company, shed more than $500bn in market value in a record one-day loss for any company on Wall Street. Investors feared that DeepSeek challenged the dominance of US AI leaders.

Donald Trump explained DeepSeek as a "wake-up call". In China, creator, Liang Wenfeng, has actually been hailed as a nationwide hero and was welcomed to go to a symposium chaired by China's premier, Li Qiang. The pace at which China has been able to overtake frontier AI research study in the US is accelerating.

But DeepSeek is not the only Chinese company to have actually innovated regardless of the embargo on sophisticated US technology. Matt Sheehan, a fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and an expert on Chinese AI, said: "If the US federal government thinks all we require to do is crush DeepSeek and then we'll be OK, then we remain in for an impolite surprise."

In recent weeks, other Chinese technology business have actually rushed to release their newest AI models, which they claim are on a par with those developed by DeepSeek and OpenAI.

But what are the Chinese AI companies that could match DeepSeek's impact?

Alibaba Cloud

On 29 January, the first day of the lunar brand-new year vacation, leading Chinese technology business Alibaba Cloud, a subsidiary of Alibaba, released an upgraded version of its Qwen 2.5 AI design, called Qwen 2.5-Max.

According to Alibaba Cloud, Qwen 2.5-Max outperforms DeepSeek V3 and Meta's Llama 3.1 across 11 benchmarks. The company said that it was "complete of confidence in the next version of Qwen 2.5-Max".

Some analysts said that the truth that Alibaba Cloud picked to release Qwen 2.5-Max simply as companies in China closed for the holidays showed the pressure that DeepSeek has actually placed on the domestic market. But Sheehan said it may also have been an attempt to ride on the wave of publicity for Chinese models created by DeepSeek's surprise.

Zhipu

Zhipu is a Beijing-based start-up that is backed by Alibaba. Referred to as among China's "AI tigers", it remained in the headings recently not for its AI achievements however for the reality that it was blacklisted by the US government. On 15 January, chessdatabase.science Zhipu was among more than 2 lots Chinese entities contributed to a United States restricted trade list. Zhipu in particular was included for supposedly aiding China's military development with its AI development. Zhipu condemned the choice and said it lacked an accurate basis.

Claims about military uplift aside, it is clear that Zhipu's development in the AI area is rapid. Its newest product is AutoGLM, an AI assistant app released in October, which assists users to operate their smart devices with complicated voice commands.

Moonshot AI

On the very same day that DeepSeek launched its R1 design, 20 January, another Chinese start-up released an LLM that it claimed could also challenge OpenAI's o1 on mathematics and reasoning.

Moonshot AI is another Alibaba-backed AI start-up, based in Beijing and asteroidsathome.net valued at $3.3 bn. Unlike Alibaba, a leviathan that was established in 1999, Moonshot AI is a relative beginner. Like DeepSeek, it was established in 2023.

Its offering, Kimi k1.5, is the updated variation of Kimi, which was launched in October 2023. It brought in attention for being the very first AI assistant that might process 200,000 Chinese characters in a single timely. Moonshot AI later on said Kimi's capability had been upgraded to be able to manage 2m Chinese characters.

Moonshot AI "remains in the top tiers of Chinese start-ups", Sheehan said. "It would not shock me at all if Moonshot or Zhipu has a model that equates to or comes close to DeepSeek in performance within the next weeks or months."

ByteDance

Another lunar new year release originated from ByteDance, TikTok's parent company. On 29 January it unveiled Doubao-1.5-pro, an upgrade to its flagship AI model, which it said might exceed OpenAI's o1 in certain tests.

As well as performance, Chinese business are challenging their US rivals on rate. Doubao's most powerful version is priced at 9 yuan per million tokens, which is nearly half the cost of DeepSeek's offering for DeepSeek-R1. For contrast, OpenAI's o1 costs the equivalent of 438 yuan for the same use.

Tencent

Mainly known for video gaming and WeChat, the ubiquitous messaging app, Tencent has likewise made strides in AI. Its flagship design is a text-to-video generator called Hunyuan, which Tencent said can perform along with Meta's Llama 3.1.