Editorial Note: Opinions and thoughts are the author’s own and not those of AFROTECH™.

Last week, DeepSeek, a Chinese artificial intelligence company, upended the tech industry by debuting its AI chatbot. Since its debut, the stock market has taken a dive for other tech companies, and American investors are left with their heads spinning.

Just as powerful as OpenAI’s ChatGPT, DeepSeek is built at a fraction of the cost. Its technology is open-source, which means it’s available to the public. It even reportedly requires less memory and energy than ChatGPT, reducing the cost of performing tasks.

DeepSeek quickly became the most downloaded free app in the U.S., overtaking ChatGPT and causing AI chip-making giant Nvidia to decrease $600 billion in market value in one day on Jan. 27. DeepSeek has been able to power the app with a measly $6 million in comparison to the billions of dollars OpenAI has raised to train its own AI.

DeepSeek’s CEO, Liang Wenfeng, has been able to do this with an estimated 50,000 Nvidia A100 chips that the company has reportedly stored. The Nvidia chips have been banned from export to China since 2022.

After reaching No. 1 in the Apple App Store, the app was hit with large-scale attacks causing it to limit registrations.

Silicon Valley has always been hailed as the innovators of the Western world. Big Tech companies in America have dominated the AI landscape for quite some time. Now President Donald Trump, once an AI skeptic, has claimed that Deepseek’s rise is a “wake-up call” for tech companies across the country, according to the BBC. OpenAI has received billions of dollars in funding from investors who believe that AI is the next big thing. I don’t doubt that AI can be usefully applied in some sectors, but AI has grown exponentially within the past two years. OpenAI has amassed so much in funds by convincing investors to give their money towards this technology with no questions asked. Advancing technology requires large investments, but there’s still much we don’t know or understand about AI and the ramifications it could have on our energy supply.

However, DeepSeek also raises a concern about whether or not OpenAI is worth the price when Deepseek can fulfill the same function at a faster, cheaper rate. Big tech companies in the U.S. often overvalue their technology in order to receive as much money as possible. Similar to crypto, when something becomes trendy and can affect stock markets, it becomes worth a lot of money. With fewer resources, money, and chips, DeepSeek had to rely on its own creativity to create an AI that rivals ChaptGPT.  But China entering the great AI race also allows for a diversified sector.

Silicon Valley cares more about competition than collaboration. That’s why even now the apps and technology we have don’t differ much from each other. The majority of companies attempt to replicate features that are successful in other apps in order to pull more consumers. While ChatGPT will still be the top AI product, DeepSeek has exposed the flaws in Silicon Valley’s system.

According to the BBC, DeepSeek CEO Wenfeng sees this as an opportunity for China to enter the space as a competitor rather than a bystander: “Their surprise stems from seeing a Chinese company join their game as an innovator, not just a follower—which is what most Chinese firms are accustomed to.”

In a Reddit Ask Me Anything (AMA) session, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman hinted at the possibility of open-sourcing its technology moving forward.

“I personally think we have been on the wrong side of history here,” Altman replied to a question on Reddit. “(We) need to figure out a different open source strategy; not everyone at OpenAI shares this view, and it’s also not our current highest priority.”

Although I don’t believe that OpenAI will loosen its grip on the AI industry anytime soon, DeepSeek will serve as a model to follow for companies that don’t have the same resources or connections to develop their own AI models.