DeepSeek — Database

01

Overview

DeepSeek is a Hangzhou-based AI lab incubated by the quantitative hedge fund High-Flyer. Its open-weight models rival top proprietary systems while training at far lower cost. The V4 generation, released in 2026 under an MIT license, is among the largest open-weight models available and is text-only.

2Products 1People 22Company links

02

Products

2

DeepSeek-V4-Pro

Flagship open-weight MoE model (~1.6T params), 1M-token context

DeepSeek-V4-Flash

Faster, lighter V4 variant for high-volume use

03

Highlights

2

01V4 (2026) is among the largest open-weight models, released under a permissive MIT license
02Frontier-level performance at a fraction of typical training cost; widely used by developers worldwide

04

People

1

Liang WenfengFounder, DeepSeek & High-Flyer

0522

Upstream suppliers

MetaX

MetaX GPUs can run inference for large models.

Downstream customers

StepFun

StepFun integrated DeepSeek-R1 into its AI product Yuewen, making it available on the web version with deep reasoning, search, and file-upload capabilities. StepFun is therefore a downstream application provider using DeepSeek's model.

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Competitors

MiniMax

MiniMax and DeepSeek compete in the reasoning-model market. The 36Kr excerpt directly compares MiniMax M1 with open-source models including DeepSeek-R1-0528, indicating that they compete in the same model category.

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Kunlun Tech

DeepSeek competes with Kunlun's SkyWork model

Kimi (Moonshot AI)

DeepSeek and Moonshot AI compete directly in general LLMs

Zhipu AI (GLM)

Both are Chinese foundation-model developers competing directly in the general-purpose LLM and enterprise model-service market; media coverage notes that Zhipu, valued around RMB 20 billion, was overshadowed by DeepSeek, reflecting their head-to-head competition in China's large-model race.

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06

Industry chain

1

Upstream suppliers

NVIDIA

DeepSeek's operator, High-Flyer, purchased thousands of NVIDIA chips for training DeepSeek's early models. The cited text contains an apparently erroneous year, so the purchase date cannot be established from this excerpt.

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