DeepSeek Explained: What It Is and How It Works

In 2025, the Chinese AI company DeepSeek gained global prominence by releasing its open-source large language model (LLM), DeepSeek-R1, which quickly surpassed established competitors like OpenAI's ChatGPT. Based in Hangzhou and led by entrepreneur Liang Wenfeng, DeepSeek aims to democratize artificial intelligence by offering high-performing, open-access models at a fraction of the cost of proprietary alternatives. DeepSeek-R1, featuring a transformer architecture and 67 billion parameters, stands out for its scale, efficiency, and use of innovative training methods like Mixture-of-Experts architecture and Reinforcement Learning with Human Feedback. It supports an impressive context length of up to 128,000 tokens and excels in multilingual tasks, particularly in English and Chinese. DeepSeek's open-source policy allows for free commercial use, fostering community-driven innovation and reducing AI deployment costs. While it raises some concerns about data privacy and political bias, its capabilities make it versatile across industries, from software development to education. DeepSeek's rise is challenging the AI industry's status quo, promoting transparency and accessibility, and hinting at a future where AI innovation is not limited to big tech companies.