Hangzhou DeepSeek, a Chinese artificial intelligence firm based in Hangzhou, specializes in developing open-source large language models. Founded in 2023 by Liang Wenfeng, the company has made waves in the AI industry for its DeepSeek-R1 model. Notably, DeepSeek has developed AI rivaling leading models like GPT-4 at a fraction of the cost and computing power. This breakthrough is particularly noteworthy given the US sanctions on China for Nvidia processors, showcasing DeepSeek's technological prowess in the competitive AI landscape.