For the second time in the last month, a Chinese app has skyrocketed to the top spot in Apple’s App Store. The first was Xiaohongshu, or RedNote, which saw a sudden surge in downloads by United States users seeking an alternative to TikTok in anticipation of the ban on that app,

With a model that offers comparable performance at seemingly a fraction of the cost, the DeepSeek chatbot is causing a reckoning over American dominance in the tech industry. The U.S. has imposed sanctions on advanced chip sales to slow down progress in AI elsewhere.

Alibaba says the latest version of its Qwen 2.5 artificial intelligence model can take on fellow Chinese firm DeepSeek's V3 as well as the top models from U.S. rivals OpenAI and Meta.

When Chinese quant hedge fund founder Liang Wenfeng went into AI research, he took 10,000 Nvidia chips and assembled a team of young, ambitious talent. Two years later, DeepSeek exploded on the scene.