DeepSeek

DeepSeek is a Chinese AI model developer known for its open-source, low-cost large language models and reasoning technology. In addition to plans for a Shanghai listing and the completion of a major funding round, the company is developing its own AI inference chips and the open-source DSpark acceleration framework. Meanwhile, China is tightening regulation and the U.S. Congress is investigating the risks of companies adopting Chinese models. As Chinese models rapidly gain ground on OpenRouter and in global token usage, DeepSeek warrants close attention because its development has implications for AI costs, the open-source ecosystem, chip demand and U.S.-China technology competition.