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DeepSeek's release of an artificial intelligence model that could duplicate the performance of OpenAI's o1 at a fraction of the expense has stunned investors and analysts. Markets reeled as Nvidia, a microchip and AI company, shed more than $500bn in market price in a record one-day loss for any 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 actually been hailed as a nationwide hero and was welcomed to go to a symposium chaired by China's premier, Li Qiang. The rate at which China has 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 innovation. Matt Sheehan, a fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and an expert on Chinese AI, said: "If the US government believes all we need to do is crush DeepSeek and after that we'll be OK, then we remain in for a rude surprise."

In recent weeks, other Chinese innovation companies have hurried to publish their most current 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 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 exceeds DeepSeek V3 and Meta's Llama 3.1 across 11 standards. The company said that it was "loaded with self-confidence in the next variation of Qwen 2.5-Max".

Some analysts said that the reality that Alibaba Cloud selected to launch Qwen 2.5-Max simply as services in China closed for the holidays showed the pressure that DeepSeek has positioned on the domestic market. But Sheehan said it may also have been an attempt to ride on the wave of promotion for Chinese designs created by DeepSeek's surprise.

Zhipu

Zhipu is a Beijing-based start-up that is backed by Alibaba. Referred to as one of China's "AI tigers", it remained in the headings recently not for its AI achievements however for the truth that it was blacklisted by the US federal government. On 15 January, valetinowiki.racing Zhipu was among more than two dozen Chinese entities included 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 decision and said it lacked a factual basis.

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

Moonshot AI

On the exact same day that DeepSeek released its R1 design, 20 January, another Chinese start-up launched an LLM that it claimed might 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, a behemoth that was founded in 1999, Moonshot AI is a relative newbie. 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 first AI assistant that might process 200,000 Chinese characters in a single timely. Moonshot AI later said Kimi's ability had been upgraded to be able to deal with 2m Chinese characters.

Moonshot AI "remains in the leading tiers of Chinese start-ups", Sheehan said. "It wouldn't surprise me at all if Moonshot or Zhipu has a model that equals or comes close to DeepSeek in efficiency within the next weeks or months."

ByteDance

Another lunar brand-new year release originated from ByteDance, TikTok's parent business. 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.

As well as efficiency, Chinese business are challenging their US competitors on rate. Doubao's most effective 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 very same use.

Tencent

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