DeepSeek has made its mark on the artificial intelligence (AI) sector within days of being released – and has already overtaken ChatGPT on Apple’s most popular apps chart.
The Chinese-made AI app has even attracted the attention of US President Donald Trump, who – while settling back into life in the White House – has said DeepSeek’s success should be a “wake-up call” to developers in the States.
Follow the Standard’s live blog for the latest on DeepSeek
And, as you’d expect, it’s not taken long for the app to draw comparisons to industry leader OpenAI. So what are the differences between the two?
Here’s what you need to know.
What are the major differences between DeepSeek and OpenAI?
Let’s start at the beginning of each company’s story. While DeepSeek was reportedly spun out from a Chinese hedge fund in 2020, OpenAI began as a non-profit in 2015. Its key leadership included names you’ll almost certainly recognise, such as Elon Musk and its current CEO, Sam Altman.
As the industry has grown rapidly, OpenAI is currently transitioning towards becoming a fully for-profit business.
There are also differences in how the two companies approach open-sourcing their AI models (which essentially means whether they allow other developers access to their code, to modify and build on).
With its DeepSeek-R1 model, DeepSeek has fully embraced open source and users can even download and run the model locally, with any custom additions they like.
OpenAI initially had an open-research ethos but it’s moved away from this. This allows OpenAI to maintain tighter controls over its AI models.
How do they make money?
OpenAI generates its income by offering its application programming interface, or API – which is a set of rules and specifications that enables other software to interact with it – to businesses, with subscription plans that grant users access to its most advanced AI models.
DeepSeek also generates income by doing this – but its offerings are noticeably cheaper than those of its competitors, and it gives away its AI for free.
The Chinese-produced app claims to have spent a “fraction” of the money its rivals splashed out on developing its models.
DeepSeek reportedly spent around £4.49m to develop its R1 AI model. In contrast, OpenAI's development costs for models like GPT-4 have been estimated to exceed £80.4m.
