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DeepSeek's release of an expert system design that could reproduce the performance of OpenAI's o1 at a fraction of the expense has shocked investors and analysts. Markets reeled as Nvidia, a microchip and AI firm, 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 supremacy of US AI leaders.

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

But DeepSeek is not the only Chinese business to have innovated regardless of the embargo on innovative US technology. Matt Sheehan, a fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and library.kemu.ac.ke a professional on Chinese AI, said: "If the US government believes all we need to do is squash DeepSeek and then we'll be OK, then we remain in for a rude surprise."

In recent weeks, other Chinese innovation companies have actually hurried to publish their most current AI designs, which they claim are on a par with those developed by DeepSeek and OpenAI.

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

Alibaba Cloud

On 29 January, the very first day of the lunar new year holiday, leading Chinese technology company Alibaba Cloud, a subsidiary of Alibaba, launched an upgraded version of its Qwen 2.5 AI design, called Qwen 2.5-Max.

According to Alibaba Cloud, Qwen 2.5-Max surpasses DeepSeek V3 and Meta's Llama 3.1 across 11 standards. The company said that it was "filled with self-confidence in the next variation of Qwen 2.5-Max".

Some experts said that the reality that Alibaba Cloud chose to release Qwen 2.5-Max simply as services in China closed for the vacations showed the pressure that DeepSeek has actually put on the domestic market. But Sheehan said it might likewise have been an effort 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. Called one of China's "AI tigers", it remained in the headlines just recently not for its AI achievements but for the reality that it was blacklisted by the US government. On 15 January, Zhipu was one of more than 2 dozen Chinese entities included to an US restricted trade list. Zhipu in particular was added for supposedly aiding China's military advancement with its AI advancement. Zhipu condemned the decision and said it did not have a factual basis.

Claims about military uplift aside, it is clear that Zhipu's development in the AI area is fast. Its latest product is AutoGLM, an AI assistant app launched in October, which helps users to run their mobile phones with complex voice commands.

Moonshot AI

On the exact same day that DeepSeek released its R1 model, 20 January, another Chinese start-up launched 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 valued at $3.3 bn. Unlike Alibaba, ghetto-art-asso.com a behemoth that was founded in 1999, Moonshot AI is a relative newbie. Like DeepSeek, it was founded in 2023.

Its offering, Kimi k1.5, is the updated version of Kimi, which was introduced in October 2023. It attracted attention for being the first AI assistant that could process 200,000 Chinese characters in a single prompt. Moonshot AI later said Kimi's capability had been upgraded to be able to handle 2m Chinese characters.

Moonshot AI "remains in the leading echelons of Chinese start-ups", Sheehan said. "It would not amaze me at all if Moonshot or Zhipu has a design 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 revealed Doubao-1.5-pro, an upgrade to its flagship AI model, which it said could exceed OpenAI's o1 in certain tests.

In addition to performance, Chinese companies are challenging their US rivals on price. Doubao's most powerful variation is priced at 9 yuan per million tokens, which is nearly half the rate of DeepSeek's offering for DeepSeek-R1. For comparison, OpenAI's o1 costs the equivalent of 438 yuan for the same usage.

Tencent

Mainly understood for gaming and WeChat, the common messaging app, Tencent has actually likewise made strides in AI. Its flagship design is a text-to-video called Hunyuan, which Tencent said can perform as well as Meta's Llama 3.1.