Business reporter, BBC News<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n US President Donald Trump has called the rise of Chinese company DeepSeek “a wake-up call” for the US tech industry, after the emergence of its artificial intelligence (AI) model triggered shockwaves on Wall Street. <\/p>\n Shares in major tech firms such as Nvidia fell sharply, with the chip giant losing almost $600bn (\u00a3482bn) in market value.<\/p>\n What has shaken the industry is DeepSeek’s claim that its R1 model was made at a fraction of the cost of its rivals – raising questions about the future of America’s AI dominance and the scale of investments US firms are planning.<\/p>\n DeepSeek has become the most downloaded free app in the US just a week after it was launched.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Responding to the news, Trump said the latest developments in China’s AI industry may be “a positive” for the US. <\/p>\n “If you could do it cheaper, if you could do it [for] less [and] get to the same end result. I think that’s a good thing for us,” he told reporters on board Air Force One.<\/p>\n He also said he was not concerned about the breakthrough, adding the US will remain a dominant player in the field.<\/p>\n DeepSeek is powered by the open source DeepSeek-V3 model, which its researchers claim was trained for around $6m (\u00a34.2m) – significantly less than the billions spent by rivals. But this claim has been disputed by others in AI.<\/p>\n Its emergence comes as the US is restricting the sale of the advanced chip technology that powers AI to China.<\/p>\n To continue their work without steady supplies of imported advanced chips, Chinese AI developers have shared their work with each other and experimented with new approaches to the technology.<\/p>\n This has resulted in AI models that require far less computing power than before.<\/p>\n It also means that they cost a lot less than previously thought possible, which has the potential to upend the industry.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The company was founded in 2023 by Liang Wenfeng in Hangzhou, a city in southeastern China. <\/p>\n The 40-year-old, an information and electronic engineering graduate, also founded the hedge fund that backed DeepSeek. <\/p>\n He was recently seen at a meeting between industry experts and the Chinese premier Li Qiang. <\/p>\nWho founded DeepSeek?<\/h2>\n<\/p>\n
![\"Banner](\"https:\/\/ichef.bbci.co.uk\/news\/480\/cpsprodpb\/6ec8\/live\/29b89380-dd27-11ef-a37f-eba91255dc3d.png.webp\")
<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n