The artificial intelligence world is buzzing about DeepSeek, a Hangzhou-based company that is rapidly gaining recognition for its innovative and cost-effective AI models. Their latest offering, the DeepSeek-v3 series, has taken the open-source community by storm, rivaling the performance of industry giants like GPT-4o and Claude-3.5-Sonnet while drastically reducing training costs.
Released on December 26, 2024, DeepSeek-v3 has quickly risen to the top of open-source model rankings. What sets it apart is its ability to compete with top-tier closed-source models while boasting significantly lower training costs. This feat has captured the attention of AI investors worldwide, with one investment firm leader describing DeepSeek's 53-page technical paper as "gold."
Key highlights of DeepSeek-v3 include:
These advancements are attributed to innovative algorithms and engineering practices, making DeepSeek-v3 a leading contender in the AI space.
DeepSeek, whose Chinese name translates to "Deep Exploration," is a subsidiary of quantitative trading giant, H幻方量化. Despite being a relatively unknown entity, 幻方量化 possesses substantial computing power, with over 10,000 NVIDIA A100 chips. In April of last year, the company formed a dedicated organization to explore the essence of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), leading to rapid progress in a short period. The company's latest offering shows just how far dedication to research and creative thought can take a company.
This is not the first time DeepSeek has turned heads. In May, their DeepSeek V2 model gained recognition for its exceptional price-to-performance ratio. The newest model has only cemented DeepSeek's place as a true innovator in the artificial intelligence space.
DeepSeek's disruptive approach has earned them the moniker "AI界拼多多," a reference to the Chinese e-commerce platform known for its competitive pricing. This nickname reflects DeepSeek's commitment to making AI technology more accessible and affordable. DeepSeek has set the price of their API service at 0.5 yuan per million input tokens, highlighting the organization's commitment to accessible artificial intelligence technology.
Deepseek will also be offering an introductory discount price of 0.1 yuan per million input tokens up until February 8th, 2025. The move is in line with the company's mission, which emphasizes the importance of broad access to powerful AI tools.
The emergence of DeepSeek-v3 has sent shockwaves through the global AI community. Experts are impressed by the model's capabilities and the efficiency with which it was trained.
Andrej Karpathy, a prominent figure in the AI field, noted that DeepSeek achieved this level of performance with a relatively small budget, using significantly fewer GPUs than typically required for models of this caliber. This achievement underscores the importance of efficient resource utilization and highlights the potential for further advancements through improved data and algorithms.
Bojan Tunguz, a former NVIDIA machine learning expert, suggests that export restrictions on high-end semiconductors may have inadvertently spurred Chinese researchers to become more resourceful and innovative. The success of DeepSeek exemplifies this phenomenon, demonstrating that constraints can lead to breakthroughs.
DeepSeek's rapid progress and commitment to affordability position them as a major player in the evolving AI landscape. As they continue to push the boundaries of performance and efficiency, DeepSeek is poised to democratize access to AI and drive further innovation across industries.