Mashable: DeepSeek has rapidly ascended to the pinnacle of the free applications category on the Apple App Store in the United States, seemingly emerging from obscurity. In a noteworthy achievement, it has displaced OpenAI’s ChatGPT app, which previously occupied the top position.

This success is not limited to the United States; DeepSeek has also secured the #1 spot among free apps in 51 countries. Additionally, it ranks within the Top 10 free apps in 111 countries on the App Store and in 18 countries on the Google Play Store.

Founded in 2023, DeepSeek is relatively new to the market and has introduced several AI models. However, it is the latest model, DeepSeek R1, that has generated significant attention, reportedly competing with the leading offerings from Western companies while utilizing only a fraction of the resources for its training.

This development has led to considerable turmoil in the stock market, with Nvidia experiencing a decline of approximately 17%, resulting in a loss of nearly $600 billion in market capitalization—the largest drop ever recorded for a U.S. company.

This situation complicates the United States' efforts to limit the export of AI-related hardware; DeepSeek was trained using Nvidia H800 chips, a scaled-down version of the H100 that complies with export restrictions for China. Nevertheless, through innovative advancements in AI training, the company has achieved impressive results with hardware that is ostensibly less powerful.

However, DeepSeek has faced challenges as well, claiming to be under a digital attack (specifically a distributed denial of service, or DDoS) and has limited new sign-ups for its app to individuals with Chinese phone numbers, although existing users can still access the app.

This situation is likely raising concerns among major tech companies in Cupertino (where Apple is yet to fully launch Apple Intelligence), Mountain View (where Google has integrated Gemini into many of its products), and Redmond (where Microsoft is a strong advocate for AI and a significant investor in OpenAI).

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