Chris Stokel-Walker: DeepSeek ‘a surprise’ to everyone

China’s DeepSeek AI has taken everyone by surprise, shaking up the market in unexpected ways, says tech journalist Chris Stokel-Walker.

Transcript

00:00I don't think a lot of people had heard of DeepSeek until yesterday. I certainly hadn't.

00:07People saying it sort of came out of nowhere. Were you aware of it? Was it on your radar?

00:12The model itself was released on Boxing Day just after Christmas 2024. So it has been

00:17around a little while for those who have been watching the AI scene. But certainly we hadn't

00:22expected it to become quite as popular and quite as significant in terms of spooking

00:27the market. Now, obviously, this is something that has been bubbling under for a little

00:30while in terms of the company, developed by a Chinese quantitative hedge fund founder

00:37who was using AI to try and pick out the best stocks possible, has been sort of earmarking

00:43a lot of these NVIDIA GPU chips, the AI chips that power these models, for a good number

00:50of years now.

00:51But really, it broke cover, I suppose, in the last week. And yeah, it has been a surprise,

00:56I think, to everybody, not just in terms of the performance of the model, but also in

01:00terms of the impact it has on the market.