DeepSeek’s release of an artificial intelligence 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 company, 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 dominance 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 national hero and was invited to attend a symposium chaired by China’s premier, Li Qiang. The pace at which China has actually been able to overtake frontier AI research study in the US is accelerating.

But DeepSeek is not the only Chinese business to have actually innovated despite the embargo on innovative US technology. Matt Sheehan, a fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and an expert on Chinese AI, said: “If the US government thinks all we require to do is squash DeepSeek and then we’ll be OK, then we remain in for a rude surprise.”

In current weeks, other Chinese technology business have actually rushed to release 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 first day of the lunar new year holiday, leading Chinese innovation company 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 surpasses DeepSeek V3 and Meta’s Llama 3.1 throughout 11 criteria. The company said that it was “full of self-confidence in the next version of Qwen 2.5-Max”.

Some analysts said that the reality that Alibaba Cloud selected to release Qwen 2.5-Max simply as businesses in China closed for the vacations reflected the pressure that DeepSeek has put on the domestic market. But Sheehan said it might likewise have been an attempt to ride on the wave of promotion for Chinese designs generated by DeepSeek’s surprise.

Zhipu

Zhipu is a Beijing-based start-up that is backed by Alibaba. Known as one of China’s “AI tigers”, it remained in the headlines recently not for its AI accomplishments however for the reality that it was blacklisted by the US government. On 15 January, Zhipu was one of more than two dozen Chinese entities included to an US limited trade list. Zhipu in particular was included for allegedly aiding China’s military development with its AI development. Zhipu condemned the decision and said it did not have an accurate basis.

Claims about military uplift aside, it is clear that Zhipu’s development in the AI space is quick. Its newest product is AutoGLM, an AI assistant app released in October, which assists users to operate their mobile phones with intricate voice commands.

Moonshot AI

On the same day that DeepSeek launched its R1 model, 20 January, another Chinese start-up launched an LLM that it claimed might also challenge OpenAI’s o1 on mathematics and thinking.

Moonshot AI is another Alibaba-backed AI start-up, based in Beijing and valued at $3.3 bn. Unlike Alibaba, a behemoth that was established in 1999, Moonshot AI is a relative newbie. Like DeepSeek, it was founded in 2023.

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

Moonshot AI “remains in the top tiers of Chinese start-ups”, Sheehan said. “It wouldn’t amaze me at all if Moonshot or Zhipu has a design that equals or comes close to DeepSeek in performance within the next weeks or months.”

ByteDance

Another lunar brand-new year release originated from ByteDance, TikTok’s moms and dad business. On 29 January it revealed Doubao-1.5-professional, an upgrade to its flagship AI design, which it said could exceed OpenAI’s o1 in certain tests.

As well as performance, Chinese companies are challenging their US competitors on price. Doubao’s most effective version is priced at 9 yuan per million tokens, which is almost half the price of DeepSeek’s offering for DeepSeek-R1. For comparison, OpenAI’s o1 costs the equivalent of 438 yuan for the same usage.

Tencent

Mainly for gaming and WeChat, wiki.rolandradio.net 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 in addition to Meta’s Llama 3.1.