Hangzhou DeepSeek, a Chinese artificial intelligence firm based in Hangzhou, specializes in creating open-source large language models. Founded in 2023 by Liang Wenfeng, the company has gained attention in the AI industry for its DeepSeek-R1 model. Impressively, DeepSeek claims to produce AI comparable to top competitors at a fraction of the cost and computing power. This breakthrough is particularly remarkable given the US sanctions on China for advanced AI chips, demonstrating DeepSeek's technological prowess in the global AI race.