How DeepSeek Went From Stock Trader to A.I. Star

Two years ago, when large Chinese technological companies like Baidu and Alibaba pursued the progress of Silicon Valley in artificial intelligence with splashing announcements and new chatbots, Deepseek adopted a different approach. He focused on research.

The strategy has borne fruit.

The Chinese start-up rocked the world of technology with its assertion that it created a powerful AI model which was much cheaper to build than the offers of its best funded American rivals.

In the rivalry between China and the United States on the domination of artificial intelligence, Deepseek seemed to come out of nowhere. In fact, he has skyrocketed in the world of Chinese technology in recent years with a path that was anything but conventional.

Its mission to continue research reflects that of companies like Openai, the Silicon Valley company which marked an American signature on AI in the fall of 2022. But the similarities stopped there mainly.

The origins of Deepseek are in finance, not technology for technology. His parent company, a Chinese hedge fund called High-Flyer, began not as a laboratory dedicated to the safeguard of AI humanity as open AI, but as a company using AI to make bets on the Chinese stock market.

High-Flyer had prospered by capitalizing on a market dominated by Chinese retail investors, who are known to jump and get out of impulsive actions. In 2021, High Flyer found himself under pressure by regulatory repression in China on speculative trade, which, according to the Beijing authorities, was in contradiction with their attempts to keep the calm markets.