OpenAI CEO Sam Altman described Chinese AI startup DeepSeek’s R1 as an “impressive model” on Monday, while assuring that his company would “deliver much better models” in the future.
DeepSeek’s announcement that its new, lower-cost model is comparable to U.S. competitors shook tech and energy stocks and raised alarms at Meta on Monday. However, President Trump called it a “positive development” and a “wake-up call” for U.S. industries.
Altman praised DeepSeek’s R1 model on X for its strong problem-solving abilities, noting it performs similarly to OpenAI’s o1 reasoning model while offering excellent value for its price.
But he mentioned “the world is going to want to use a LOT” about AI, expressing his belief that “more compute is more important now than ever before to succeed at our mission.”
Altman stated that OpenAI “will obviously deliver much better models” and predicted that the world will “really be quite amazed by the next gen models coming.”
He also mentioned that he looks “forward to bringing you all AGI and beyond.”
DeepSeek claimed it used only a fraction of the computer chips that major Western AI companies like OpenAI rely on for training, demonstrating a more efficient approach to data analysis with those chips.
The company has open-sourced its model, enabling anyone to create and distribute products using the same technology.
Many experts believe generative AI will evolve into a commodity, becoming more efficient and accessible over time.
DeepSeek topped Apple’s App Store over the weekend and held the No. 1 spot through late Monday, despite user reports of concerns over its censorship of politically sensitive topics.
These include the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, Uyghur camps in China’s Xinjiang province (where the government faces genocide allegations), and posts on Taiwanese independence.
DeepSeek’s privacy policy specifies that the company “stores the information we collect in secure servers located in the People’s Republic of China.”
The policy also reveals that the company collects IP addresses, unique device identifiers, and notes that “we may collect your text or audio input, prompt, uploaded files, feedback, chat history, or other content that you provide to our model and services.”
Owned by hedge fund High-Flyer, which donated $53 million to charity last year as Beijing urged firms to contribute to “common prosperity,” according to Bloomberg.
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) stated that “they’re now trying to get a leg up on us in AI as you’ve seen in the last day or so.”