Chinese AI chatbot DeepSeek becomes most downloaded app in Vietnam

By Luu Quy   January 28, 2025 | 11:17 pm PT
Chinese AI chatbot DeepSeek becomes most downloaded app in Vietnam
The DeepSeek - AI Assistant app on the Vietnamese app store. Photo by VnExpress/Luu Quy
DeepSeek, the Chinese AI platform that rivals ChatGPT in capability, has become the most downloaded app in Vietnam.

By Tuesday noon "DeepSeek - AI Assistant" had risen to the top of the most downloaded free apps on Apple’s app store and ranked among the top five in the Productivity category on Google Play.

Many Vietnamese users left positive reviews for the app, comparing it to products from OpenAI and Google.

A user named Thanh commented: "I think this is the best free AI app I have ever seen. It is intelligent, responds quickly, and its quality is nearly the same as ChatGPT Pro while being free."

DeepSeek quickly gained global popularity after being released on app stores two weeks ago.

It is the top free app on the Apple store in at least 52 countries and territories as of Tuesday morning and ranks among the top 10 in 111 other markets, according to mobile app analytics firm Appfigures. It had accumulated 2.6 million downloads across platforms by Monday.

Analytics firm Sensor Tower reported that more than 80% of downloads on mobile devices were done in the last seven days. China accounted for 23% of the downloads, and the U.S. for 15%.

Tech news site TechCrunch said of the app: "While hundreds of millions of people use ChatGPT and Gemini each month, DeepSeek proves that there is still room in the consumer AI space and that new competitors should not be overlooked."

DeepSeek was founded in 2023 by Liang Wenfeng, co-founder of the AI-focused investment fund High-Flyer.

Development of the chatbot started in April 2023 with the goal of achieving artificial general intelligence, a target also pursued by OpenAI and similar companies.

DeepSeek started gaining attention last week with the release of R1, a model with reasoning capabilities that competes with OpenAI’s Q* (o1).

What sets this Chinese app apart is its open-source approach, allowing other AI developers to use and contribute to it.

Additionally, DeepSeek was developed with modest resources due to China's restrictions on chip imports.

It is estimated to have been trained at a cost of $5.6 million, a fraction of the budgets used by OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and Meta for their models.

 
 
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