DeepSeek, a Chinese AI startup, has rapidly emerged as a formidable competitor in the artificial intelligence landscape, particularly with its recent chatbot app that has topped the charts in the U.S. App Store. Founded in 2023 by hedge fund billionaire Liang Wenfeng and based in Hangzhou, DeepSeek has developed open-source large language models (LLMs) that perform on par with established giants like OpenAI but at a fraction of the cost—reportedly around $6 million compared to billions spent by U.S. firms