How DeepSeek and Open Source Models Are Shaking Up AI: QuickTake

Tech companies and academics have long wrestled with the risks and rewards of building open source software. But the frenzy around generative artificial intelligence has lent new significance to the debate.

The rise of the Chinese AI startup DeepSeek has only added attention to the issue. DeepSeek recently released an open source model that it said rivaled software from the top American AI developers — and it claimed to have done so for a fraction of the development cost, using less powerful hardware.

Here’s what you need to know.

What is open source?

In general, open source refers to software ...