Some AI researchers hailed DeepSeek’s R1 as a breakthrough on the same level as DeepMind’s AlphaZero, a 2017 model that became superhuman at the board games Chess and Go by purely playing against itself and improving, rather than observing any human games.

Liang Wenfeng, the 40-year-old founder of DeepSeek, trained as an engineer and then launched a hedge fund. Now he’s enjoying sudden success with his AI chatbot.

The Chinese artificial intelligence app DeepSeek became the most downloaded free app in the U.S. on Apple’s app store and its low cost claims are putting the pressure on major American tech companies.