Chinese developer DeepSeek's AI tool has surpassed ChatGPT to become the most downloaded app in U.S. app stores today. The app, which was launched on January 10 in U.S. app stores, integrates the open-source reasoning model "R1" into a chatbot, outperforming OpenAI's ChatGPT in download numbers.
DeepSeek's R1 model has garnered global attention due to its higher performance at much lower costs compared to OpenAI's "o1" model.
While OpenAI's o1-integrated app is priced at $200, DeepSeek's free and open-source offering has caused technology companies heavily investing in AI to see stock declines on the NASDAQ.
DeepSeek's chatbot also became the most downloaded app in Apple's Chinese store, followed by ByteDance's "Doubao" and Moonshot AI's "Kimi" AI assistant apps.
DeepSeek's R1 reasoning model ranked third in the Chatbot Arena, where researchers from the University of California assess the performance of AI applications, surpassing OpenAI's o1 model, though behind two models from Google's Gemini family.
