OpenAI CEO and co-founder Sam Altman called Chinese artificial intelligence startup DeepSeek “impressive,” while shrugging off concerns the startup could threaten OpenAI’s standing.
“deepseek’s r1 is an impressive model, particularly around what they’re able to deliver for the price,” Altman wrote on X Monday night. “we will obviously deliver much better models and also it’s legit invigorating to have a new competitor! we will pull up some releases.”
DeepSeek launched its AI model, R1, last week, which quickly drew comparisons to the models offered by OpenAI or other leading U.S. AI firms.
The Chinese app jumped to the No. 1 free app on Apple’s App Store over the weekend, surging above OpenAI, which sat in the No. 2 spot.
Altman said OpenAI is “excited to continue to executive on our research roadmap,” while hinting at future projects.
OpenAI believes “more compute is more important now than ever before to succeed at our mission,” Altman wrote. “the world is going to want to use a LOT of ai, and really be quite amazed by the next gen models coming.”
“look forward to bringing you all AGI [artificial generative intelligence] and beyond,” Altman added.
DeepSeek allegedly spent just $5.6 million to train its latest models, The Wall Street Journal first reported over the weekend, raising questions over the billions U.S. firms are spending on AI development.
OpenAI has spent billions into the development of its models, including its popular chatbot ChatGPT.
DeepSeek claims its R1 open-source reasoning model has a “performance on par with” OpenAI.
When asked about the DeepSeek surge on a call with reporters, OpenAI Chief Product Officer Kevin Weil said it “underscores how important it is that the U.S. wins this race.”
“It’s a super competitive industry, right? And this is showing…that it’s competitive globally, not just within the U.S.,” he continued. “So DeepSeek just launched something, they launched a good model. It’s on par with where we were a number of months ago.”
