OpenAI boss Sam Altman praises "impressive" rival DeepSeek

Sam Altman, the boss of OpenAI, recently opened up about ChatGPT’s Chinese rival DeepSeek, which had just become an overnight sensation.

Altman praised DeepSeek’s models in a post on X and promised that his company “will obviously deliver much better models” and will “pull up some releases.”

“Deepseek’s r1 is an impressive model, particularly around what they’re able to deliver for the price,” Altman says.

Chinese startup DeepSeek has disrupted the AI sector by launching advanced models, DeepSeek-V3 and DeepSeek-R1, that rival or outperform US industry leaders like OpenAI and Meta at significantly lower costs. The company claims to have trained these models for under $6 million using Nvidia H800 chips.

“The world is going to want to use a LOT of AI, and really be quite amazed by the next-gen models coming,” Altman says further.

Developed for just $6 million using open-source technology and innovative methods requiring fewer resources, DeepSeek is seeking to challenge the dominance of US AI companies. The company was founded by Liang Wenfeng, co-founder of the hedge fund High-Flyer.

Since its surprise launch, DeepSeek has surpassed ChatGPT as the top-rated free app on the US App Store. Nvidia’s stock also dropped nearly 17%, alongside declines in Microsoft, Google, and other tech firms, after the low-cost AI’s unexpected rise of DeepSeek.

But now, Deepseek has temporarily limited registrations following a cyberattack and website outages triggered by the app’s surging popularity.

When you open the website, at least at the time of this publication, the site will greet you, “Due to large-scale malicious attacks on DeepSeek’s services, registration may be busy. Please wait and try again. Registered users can log in normally. Thank you for your understanding and support.”