DeepSeek's release of a synthetic intelligence model that could replicate the performance of OpenAI's o1 at a fraction of the cost has shocked 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 supremacy of US AI .

Donald Trump explained DeepSeek as a "wake-up call". In China, DeepSeek's creator, Liang Wenfeng, has been hailed as a national hero and was welcomed to attend a symposium chaired by China's premier, Li Qiang. The pace at which China has been able to catch up with frontier AI research study in the US is accelerating.

But DeepSeek is not the only Chinese business to have innovated in spite of the embargo on innovative US technology. Matt Sheehan, a fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and a specialist on Chinese AI, said: "If the US government thinks all we require to do is crush DeepSeek and then we'll be OK, then we remain in for a rude surprise."

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

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

Alibaba Cloud

On 29 January, the very first day of the lunar new year vacation, leading Chinese technology business Alibaba Cloud, a subsidiary of Alibaba, released an upgraded version of its Qwen 2.5 AI model, called Qwen 2.5-Max.

According to Alibaba Cloud, Qwen 2.5-Max outshines DeepSeek V3 and Meta's Llama 3.1 across 11 criteria. The business said that it was "loaded with self-confidence in the next variation of Qwen 2.5-Max".

Some experts said that the reality that Alibaba Cloud chose to launch Qwen 2.5-Max simply as companies in China closed for the holidays showed the pressure that DeepSeek has positioned on the domestic market. But Sheehan said it may also have been an effort to ride on the wave of publicity for Chinese models generated by DeepSeek's surprise.

Zhipu

Zhipu is a Beijing-based start-up that is backed by Alibaba. Referred to as one of China's "AI tigers", it remained in the headlines recently not for its AI achievements however for disgaeawiki.info the fact that it was blacklisted by the US government. On 15 January, Zhipu was among more than two dozen Chinese entities contributed to a United States restricted trade list. Zhipu in specific was added for apparently aiding China's military development with its AI development. Zhipu condemned the decision and said it lacked a factual basis.

Claims about military uplift aside, it is clear that Zhipu's development in the AI area is rapid. Its most recent item is AutoGLM, an AI assistant app launched in October, which assists users to run their smartphones with complex voice commands.

Moonshot AI

On the very same day that DeepSeek released its R1 model, 20 January, another Chinese start-up launched an LLM that it claimed might also challenge OpenAI's o1 on mathematics and thinking.

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 updated variation of Kimi, which was released in October 2023. It drew in attention for being the very first AI assistant that could process 200,000 Chinese characters in a single timely. Moonshot AI later said Kimi's ability had been updated to be able to deal with 2m Chinese characters.

Moonshot AI "remains in the top tiers of Chinese start-ups", Sheehan said. "It wouldn't amaze me at all if Moonshot or Zhipu has a design that equals or comes close to DeepSeek in performance within the next weeks or months."

ByteDance

Another lunar brand-new year release came from ByteDance, TikTok's parent business. On 29 January it unveiled Doubao-1.5-professional, an upgrade to its flagship AI model, which it said might exceed OpenAI's o1 in certain tests.

As well as efficiency, Chinese companies are challenging their US rivals on price. Doubao's most effective version is priced at 9 yuan per million tokens, which is almost half the price of DeepSeek's offering for galgbtqhistoryproject.org DeepSeek-R1. For comparison, OpenAI's o1 costs the equivalent of 438 yuan for the very same use.

Tencent

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