DeepSeek: Everything You Need To Know

We had gotten used to there only being a handful of major AI models running the show, but things change. There’s a new kid on the block, and his name is DeepSeek. Right now, there are tons of questions going around about this break-out star of the AI world. Well, if you want to know more about DeepSeek, here’s a guide on what you need to know about it.

This article will be updated as time goes on, so you should feel free to check back every now and then. At the time of writing this piece, new developments are coming at us left and right, so you should expect to see updates to this piece fairly often. We’ll go over the things you should know and be aware of with this new AI tool.

There’s also a crucial bit of information that you should be aware of.

What is DeepSeek?

First, let’s start off with something pretty basic; what the heck is DeepSeek? Well, it’s a new AI chatbot. It’s just like Google Gemini, OpenAI ChatGPT, Anthropic Claude, and other chatbots. It gives you text-based responses based on input. Several people have done studies, and they found that its responses can challenge ChatGPT’s and Google Gemini’s. This makes it a pretty big threat to these companies.

How long has DeepSeek been around?

The company was formed in 2023. It is owned by the Chinese hedge fund named High-Flyer. DeepSeek’s founder, Liang Wenfeng, also co-founded High-Flyer. He is the acting CEO.

What model currently powers DeepSeek?

DeepSeek used the model named DeepSeek-V3. This model has 671 billion total parameters. It also has a context window of 128K, which is far behind the likes of Gemini, but it’s pretty average compared to other models.

Currently, DeepSeek uses the model called R1. This is the model that made waves throughout the AI industry. This model also has 671 billion parameters and a 128K context window.

Are there any usage limits?

According to a user on Reddit, the DeepSeek website limits you to just 50 messages. However, the company states that there aren’t any rate limits on the DeepSeek API. This could be because it’s cheaper to use than many other models on the market.

How do I access DeepSeek?

There are two main ways to do so. Firstly, you can go to the official DeepSeek website. For mobile users, you can download the app from the Google Play Store or the Apple App Store.

How do I sign up?

Signing up for DeepSeek is pretty simple, and it’s no different from most other services. There are a couple of options. You can either provide your email address or phone number along with a password. The other option is to sign in with your Google account.

How much does it cost to use DeepSeek?

Nothing. DeepSeek is free to download and use.

Does it have a subscription service?

For the time being, it does not.

How much does it cost to use the DeepSeek API?

It has an input cost of $0.55 and an output cost of $2.19 per million tokens. This is better than models like GPT-4o (input:$2.50 output: $10.00) and Gemini 1.5 Pro (input: $1.25 output: $5.00).

Is DeepSeek open-source?

Yes. This is something that differentiates it from Gemini and OpenAI’s GPT models.

Is DeepSeek multimodal?

In case you don’t know, a multimodal model is one that can understand and create multiple forms of media. For example, a model that can generate both images and text is multimodal. It’s the same thing for a model that can both understand images and text.

DeepSeek R1 is not a multimodal model. However, the company does have a model called Janus Pro. It unveiled this model not too long ago. Janus Pro has the ability to both understand and generate text and images. So, if you want to ask it questions based on an image, you can upload an image as the prompt. Also, you can use it as an image generator just like DALL-E.

Janus Pro is the successor to Janus, and the company showed a comparison between the two models.

Janus Pro is available to download from the company’s Hugging Face page.

How does DeepSeek perform?

This is one of the most significant aspects of this chatbot. According to an analysis from Artificial Analysis, DeepSeek is a formidable model. In terms of speed, it’s pretty slow compared to the rest of the competition, but it makes up for it in raw performance. Based on several tests, DeepSeek R1 was able to best OpenAI’s GPT-4o in different areas.

The graph below shows the quality rating of the top AI models on the market. We see that DeepSeek R1 (89 points) is just one point behind OpenAI’s o1 model (90 points), the company’s most advanced reasoning model. However, it was able to best o1-mini (84 points), GPT-4o (73 points), and GPT-4o mini (73 points).

It was also able to beat our Google’s most advanced models Gemini 2.0 Experimental (82 points) and Gemini 1.5 Pro (80 points). The rest of the list is populated by models from Meta, Anthropic, Amazon, and Mistral.

The next graph comes from DeepSeek’s Github. It shows DeepSeek R1’s performance compared to OpenAI’s o1, a previous version of R1, and DeepSeek-V3.

As you can see, it was able to trade blows with the best that OpenAI has to offer.

So, all in all, it’s no surprise that DeepSeek was able to make such a splash in the AI space. It came out of nowhere and brought a model that should put AI veterans like Google and OpenAI on their toes.

Where is DeepSeek available?

From what we can tell, DeepSeek is available in the U.S. and China. We’re certain it’s available in other regions as well.

Does DeepSeek collect your data?

That is a doozy of a question. Honestly, this might be the longest section of this piece. We’re not going to sugarcoat this, DeepSeek gathers an absolute TON of information about you AND it stores that data on a server in mainland China. If this is something that you do not want to happen, then we suggest that you do not download or sign up for DeepSeek.

The list of information it gathers on you is rather long. DeepSeek directly informs people that it gathers information like:

• Username
• Email address
• Phone number
• Passwords
• Payment information
• Age
• Proof of identity
• Uploaded files
• Text Prompts
• Chat history
• “Other content you provide”, as per the company’s privacy page
• Audio recordings
• Browser cookies
• IP addresses
• The model of the device you’re using
• The operating system of the device you’re using
• Keystroke patterns
• System language
• Crash reports
• Service logs
• Information about you that it may obtain from advertisers
• Access tokens from third-party services that you log in with (i.e Google or Apple)

Does DeepSeek share your information?

Yes. The company explains that it may share your information with advertisers, other entities within its corporate group, and other groups as the result of a merger, change of control, reorganization, financing, sale of assets, or acquisition. This means that, once DeepSeek has your data, there’s no telling how many hands it will change along its journey.

How long does DeepSeek keep your data?

What makes the situation worse is the fact that DeepSeek holds on to your data indefinitely. As per the privacy page, it retains your data “for as long as necessary,“. This means that your data could be stored on the company’s servers for years. At least Google has a hard cut-off date for how long it keeps your data.

Does it give your data to advertisers?

Yes. The company says so on its privacy policy page. “We may share information collected through your use of the Service with our advertising or analytics partners.” Information being sold to advertisers is nothing new, but with all of the information that DeepSeek scoops up, it shines a harsh light on the company.

Is there a way to opt out of having your data taken?

Unfortunately, no. DeepSeek states that some of the information it gathers is taken automatically, so there’s no to control it. Also, if you delete your account, the company does not state whether your content will be deleted or if it will live on in the servers.

DeepSeek does, however, give you at least SOME control over our data, but it’s extremely limiting. Through the settings, you’re allowed to erase your chat history. Next, you can go to your browser and disable browser cookies. You’ll need to do this in your browser’s general settings, not on the DeepSeek website.

Will DeepSeek be banned in certain countries?

At this point, it’s tough to say. TikTok was nearly booted from the United States because the information it took from users resided in China. We don’t know all of the information that TikTok stored, but we’re sure it wasn’t as extreme as DeepSeek.

Since DeepSeek is taking so much data from the people who use it, we’re most certain that some governmental entity will find an issue with it and move to bring legal action. It hasn’t happened yet, but this article will be updated if something like that happens.

What’s the AI market crash about?

At the time of writing this, DeepSeek has had a bit of a rippling effect in the AI company world. Obviously, top AI companies like Meta, Google, OpenAI, and Anthropic are wary of the potential completion. However, there’s more to this story. As of the time this article comes out (late January 2025), several major tech companies have seen a pretty notable drop in their stock prices.

The largest drop happened with Nvidia. In 2024, the company saw a meteoric rise in the stock market as companies bought thousands upon thousands of its chips. It reached an over $2 trillion market value. However, in the wake of DeepSeek, its prices dropped a whopping $596.7 billion in the market in just one day.

Nvidia isn’t the only company that dropped a bunch in the market. Other companies that lost hard are:

• Broadcom (Lost $194.9 billion)
• Oracle (Lost $76 billion)
• Microsoft (Lost $72.2 billion)
• Arista Networks (Lost $36.6 billion)
• Micron Technologies (Lost $14.1 billion)
• Advanced Micro Devices (Lost $13 billion)
• Cisco Systems (Lost $13 billion)
• Amphenol (Lost $11.2 billion)
• Applied Materials (Lost $10.6 billion)

Those are the top 10 biggest losers in the market, including Nvidia. Altogether, those companies lost north of a trillion dollars in market value in one day. That’s a pretty massive drop.

What’s the reason for the drop?

The thing is that training and maintaining AI models is a costly business. We’re not just talking about money, it also eats up energy like it’s no one’s business. This is why companies like Meta and Microsoft are trying to build nuclear plants.

However, DeepSeek comes onto the scene with a model that costs a fraction of the money and energy to maintain. Also, it’s able to run on weaker chips. This crushed the disillusion that powerful AI needed powerful chips, a bunch of money, and a ton of energy to nurture. So, many of the people who were investing in large tech companies like Microsoft and Nvidia lost faith that their money was being put to the right use. Remember, it’s been able to beat OpenAI’s most powerful model on some tests.

Many of the people who invested in these companies sold off their stocks, which led to a bit of a crash. As you can imagine, Nvidia was hit the hardest because it was one of the main companies supplying powerful chips to AI companies across the nation.

The company to lose the second most value, Broadcom, is a chipmaker as well, and people investing in it also took their dollars elsewhere. Many of the top AI companies in the U.S. have seen a large dip in their stock price and at this point, we don’t know how long this is going to go on for. We’re sure it won’t be long before other companies like Google, OpenAI, Meta, and others start to feel the effects of this.

What are DeepSeek’s plans going forward?

At this point, we’re not sure what the company is planning. The company does have an API available, so we know that it wants other AI platforms to use its models. As popular as it has become, we’re sure that numerous services will rise using its API.