DeepSeek iOS App Overtakes ChatGPT, Ranks on Top of the App Store

DeepSeek for iOS has overtaken OpenAI’s ChatGPT to prime the App Retailer’s “Prime free apps” chart within the US. The eponymous Chinese language firm released the open-source DeepSeek-R1 synthetic intelligence (AI) mannequin final week, which outperforms OpenAI’s o1 AI mannequin in a number of benchmarks. This launch has made the corporate and its AI chatbot the discuss of the city, with a number of Silicon Valley tech leaders reacting to its sudden rise. Notably, the DeepSeek app is fully free to make use of, with no subscription tiers introduced to date.

DeepSeek Overtakes ChatGPT

Ever since OpenAI launched the ChatGPT for iOS app in Might 2023, it has constantly been among the many prime free purposes on the App Retailer and has remained the highest-ranked AI app on the platform. Nevertheless, this throne was taken by the DeepSeek app just lately because it reached the highest of the chart. The rise is being attributed to the latest launch of the DeepSeek-R1 AI mannequin.

Notably, little is thought concerning the Hangzhou-based AI agency which was based in 2023 and has launched a number of open-source giant language fashions (LLMs). Whereas US-based tech firms have additionally launched open-source fashions, with Meta being a notable point out locally, none comes near the capabilities and scale of what the DeepSeek fashions supply. The corporate additionally claimed to have constructed the mannequin with a value of $6 million (roughly Rs. 51.8 crore), considerably cheaper than AI fashions of this scale.

A number of Silicon Valley-based tech leaders have reacted to the sudden rise of those fashions. Enterprise capitalist Marc Andreessen called the R1 AI mannequin “some of the wonderful and spectacular breakthroughs I’ve ever seen,” whereas Perplexity AI Co-Founder and CEO Aravind Srinivas congratulated the Chinese language agency for changing into the primary AI app to beat ChatGPT.

In a LinkedIn post, Yann LeCun, one of many godfathers of AI and the present Vice President and Chief AI Scientist at Meta, stated “Open supply fashions are surpassing proprietary ones.” Holger Zschäpitz, a senior monetary reporter at German free-to-air tv information channel Welt, argued DeepSeek “might symbolize a giant risk to US fairness markets.”

DeepSeek Is Not the Solely One

Whereas DeepSeek has damaged the development of firms open-sourcing smaller and fewer succesful AI fashions whereas conserving the frontier fashions beneath a proprietary paywall, it isn’t the one one. One other Chinese language agency, Kimi AI, announced the discharge of the Kimi k1.5 AI mannequin. The corporate claims it’s an “o1-level multimodal LLM that outperforms GPT-4o and Claude Sonnet 3.5 on a number of benchmarks”.

Notably, Kimi AI has made the net model of its chatbot utterly free to make use of with limitless utilization, much like DeepSeek. The AI mannequin also can carry out real-time internet searches, analyse as much as 50 recordsdata throughout a various vary of codecs, and has picture understanding capabilities as properly. Whereas its technical report is available on GitHub, it’s at present not obtainable in open-source.