DeepSeek's release of an artificial intelligence model that could reproduce the efficiency of OpenAI's o1 at a portion of the expense has stunned financiers and experts. Markets reeled as Nvidia, a microchip and AI firm, shed more than $500bn in market price in a record one-day loss for any business on Wall Street. Investors feared that DeepSeek challenged the dominance of US AI leaders.

Donald Trump explained DeepSeek as a "wake-up call". In China, DeepSeek's founder, Liang Wenfeng, has been hailed as a nationwide hero and was invited to attend a symposium chaired by China's premier, Li Qiang. The speed at which China has had the ability to overtake frontier AI research in the US is accelerating.

But DeepSeek is not the only Chinese company to have actually innovated in spite of the embargo on advanced US technology. Matt Sheehan, a fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and a specialist on Chinese AI, said: "If the US government believes all we need to do is squash DeepSeek and after that we'll be OK, then we remain in for an impolite surprise."

In recent weeks, other Chinese innovation companies have rushed to publish their latest AI designs, which they claim are on a par with those established by DeepSeek and OpenAI.

But what are the Chinese AI business that could match DeepSeek's impact?

Alibaba Cloud

On 29 January, engel-und-waisen.de the first day of the lunar brand-new year vacation, leading Chinese technology company Alibaba Cloud, a subsidiary of Alibaba, released an upgraded variation of its Qwen 2.5 AI model, called Qwen 2.5-Max.

According to Alibaba Cloud, Qwen 2.5-Max outperforms DeepSeek V3 and Meta's Llama 3.1 throughout 11 benchmarks. The company said that it was "filled with self-confidence in the next version of Qwen 2.5-Max".

Some analysts said that the truth that Alibaba Cloud selected to launch Qwen 2.5-Max simply as organizations in China closed for the vacations showed the pressure that DeepSeek has actually placed on the domestic market. But Sheehan said it may also have been an effort to ride on the wave of promotion for Chinese models created by DeepSeek's surprise.

Zhipu

Zhipu is a Beijing-based start-up that is backed by Alibaba. Called one of China's "AI tigers", it remained in the headlines just recently not for its AI accomplishments however for the reality that it was blacklisted by the US federal government. On 15 January, Zhipu was among more than two entities contributed to an US restricted trade list. Zhipu in particular was included for allegedly aiding China's military improvement with its AI development. Zhipu condemned the choice and said it did not have an accurate basis.

Claims about military uplift aside, it is clear that Zhipu's development in the AI space is rapid. Its latest item is AutoGLM, an AI assistant app released in October, which helps users to operate their smartphones with complicated voice commands.

Moonshot AI

On the exact same day that DeepSeek released its R1 design, 20 January, another Chinese start-up released an LLM that it claimed might also challenge OpenAI's o1 on mathematics and photorum.eclat-mauve.fr reasoning.

Moonshot AI is another Alibaba-backed AI start-up, based in Beijing and valued at $3.3 bn. Unlike Alibaba, a behemoth that was established in 1999, Moonshot AI is a relative newcomer. Like DeepSeek, it was established in 2023.

Its offering, Kimi k1.5, is the upgraded version of Kimi, which was released in October 2023. It attracted attention for being the first AI assistant that could process 200,000 Chinese characters in a single timely. Moonshot AI later on said Kimi's capability had actually been updated to be able to handle 2m Chinese characters.

Moonshot AI "remains in the leading tiers of Chinese start-ups", Sheehan said. "It would not shock me at all if Moonshot or Zhipu has a design that equates to or comes close to DeepSeek in efficiency within the next weeks or months."

ByteDance

Another lunar new year release came from ByteDance, TikTok's moms and dad company. On 29 January it unveiled Doubao-1.5-professional, an upgrade to its flagship AI design, which it said might outshine OpenAI's o1 in certain tests.

In addition to efficiency, Chinese business are challenging their US rivals on cost. Doubao's most effective variation is priced at 9 yuan per million tokens, which is nearly half the price of DeepSeek's offering for DeepSeek-R1. For comparison, OpenAI's o1 costs the equivalent of 438 yuan for the very same usage.

Tencent

Mainly understood for video gaming and WeChat, the common messaging app, Tencent has likewise made strides in AI. Its flagship design is a text-to-video generator called Hunyuan, which Tencent said can perform along with Meta's Llama 3.1.