DeepSeek Ranks In First Place On Apple’s App Store, Surpassing ChatGPT

The Chinese AI startup DeepSeek’s free app hit first place in Apple’s App Store in the United States this Monday, surpassing its rival ChatGPT.

The AI company launched its latest open-source model DeepSeek-V3 at the end of December, claiming that it could perform better than frontier models like Anthropic’s Claude-Sonnet-3.5 and OpenAI’s GPT-4o. The model has been gaining increasing popularity among American users and worldwide.

“Experience seamless interaction with DeepSeek’s official AI assistant for free!” states the app description on the App Store. “Enjoy faster speeds and comprehensive features designed to answer your questions and enhance your life efficiently.”

According to Reuters, DeepSeek – AI Assistant has been available for mobile downloads at no cost since January 10. The company has been garnering attention, even in Silicon Valley, for its ability to develop highly advanced AI models.

Notably, according to a paper published by DeepSeek researchers in December, compared to other AI companies, these models are created at a fraction of the cost and with less advanced AI chips. This achievement comes as the U.S. government continues to regulate AI chip exports—and recently proposed a new framework amid ongoing controversies.

Aravind Srinivas, Perplexity’s CEO and co-founder, acknowledged the Chinese company’s record on the social media platform X. “Congrats to DeepSeek AI for getting to #1 on the App Store,” wrote Srinivas. “For a while, it wasn’t clear who would beat ChatGPT for the first time. The best we could manage was #8, a year ago.”

Congrats to @deepseek_ai for getting to #1 on the App Store. For a while, it wasn’t clear who would beat ChatGPT for the first time. The best we could manage was #8, a year ago. Look forward to using all their models for search, assistant, and agents this year. pic.twitter.com/WpVR3TFA0t

— Aravind Srinivas (@AravSrinivas) January 27, 2025

DeepSeek is not the only Chinese app gaining popularity in the U.S. Amid the TikTok controversies and temporary shutdown, millions of Americans downloaded the video-sharing app RedNote.