28th January, 2025

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DeepSeek: disrupting GenAI and stock markets

In its first week, DeepSeek displaced ChatGPT as Apple’s top App Store download

… and it’s had an unprecedented impact on stock valuations.

January 27th held potential to be tense for anyone invested in AI stocks such as chip maker Nvidia, which plummeted 17% – to the tune of roughly $593 billion US – in a single day.

While Nvidia took the biggest hit, Alphabet (Google’s parent company), Dell Technologies, Microsoft and others also felt the impact. There’s been some recovery and reversals of losses; earlier today, Nvidia’s one-week loss stood at 9.42%.

What happened? In a word, ” DeepSeek”.

A Chinese AI startup, founded in 2023, rolled out DeepSeek’s R1 model on January 20/25 as a free product. The startup says it’s produced this product – a rival to ChatGPT, Claude, Copilot, Gemini, Perplexity and more – at significantly lower costs than its competitors’ products, in part by relying on fewer chips and less data.

… and we thought ChatGPT had an incredible launch

We thought ChatGPT had an incredible launch in November 2022; you may remember I began writing about it here on my website in early December 2022. Well, hold on to your hat. By January 26/25, less than a week after its product release, DeepSeek had blasted to the top of Apple’s App Store downloads, overtaking ChatGPT.

Today, we’re learning DeepSeek has restricted access to this free product. Depending on your sources, you may read or hear this is the result of “large-scale malicious attacks” on DeepSeek, or that demand was so intense that the service crashed for over an hour. Either way, and whether or not (how soon) this changes, as of January 28/25, signups are being limited to those with Chinese mainland phone numbers.

“AN EXCELLENT AI ADVANCEMENT”

Nvidia has called DeepSeek’s R1 model “an excellent AI advancement” and said the advances “… show the usefulness of its chips for the Chinese market and that more of its chips will be needed in the future to meet demand for DeepSeek’s services.”

WHY should you care?

Why am I giving you this overview, even as nuances and implications are under discussion in business, political and other circles? Here are my thoughts.

✅ If you work alongside your organisation’s leaders, it’s likely you’ll be in meetings or conversations with people who are paying attention to and considering this latest tech advance, potential ramifications and risk management/data security.

✅ In those meetings, it helps you – and can help people appreciate the value you represent to your organisation – when you’re aware of, and have some familiarity with, topics and issues of relevance to your colleagues, board and the organisation itself.

✅Whether or not you attend senior leadership meetings, it’s good to be curious and aware of what’s going on beyond our immediate environment. When the emergence of a new AI resource leads to the biggest single-day loss for a company on Wall Street, that’s big news.

You’ll find loads of tech-related career resources here

I’ve been writing about tech and digitization of the assistant career for years, right here. When you head to my home page, you’ll find a search field just below the blue-toned page header.

You’ll also find an entire series of drop-down menus on the home page, loaded with resources. Hover your mouse over the heading, “ADDITIONAL RESOURCES: INSIGHTS, ARTICLES TO HELP YOU SUCCEED”, and explore. When you hover your mouse over the “AI, TECH” subsection, you’ll find a number of articles I’ve written to help you.