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January 28, 2025

As DeepSeek upsets the market, investors take stock: 'The only real losers are European LLM-makers'

The Chinese startup's success has shifted focus onto AI's application layer


Credit: Unsplash

Chinese AI startup DeepSeek stunned investors when it released a high-performing chatbot to rival those built by the world's biggest tech companies –– seemingly at a fraction of the cost.

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Kai Nicol-Schwarz

Kai Nicol-Schwarz was a senior reporter at Sifted. He covered AI and UK tech.

Miriam Partington

Miriam Partington was a senior reporter at Sifted, based in Berlin. She covered the DACH region and the future of work, and wrote Startup Life , a weekly newsletter on what it takes to build a startup.

Martin Coulter

Martin Coulter is Sifted's news editor, based in London. You can follow him on LinkedIn and X

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