Published 18:36 IST, January 30th 2025
'Really Powerful Model...': Union Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw Lauds China's DeepSeek
Union Electronics and IT Minister Ashwani Vaishnaw praised DeepSeek and said that India will soon host it on local servers as it is an open-source model.

New Delhi: Lauding the performance of DeepSeek, Union Electronics and IT Minister Ashwani Vaishnaw on Thursday said that India will soon host the Chinese AI model on its local servers.
Emphasizing the investment being made in the AI sector globally, Union Minister Vaishnaw said that DeepSeek is an outcome of smart planning.
Vaishnaw Praises China's DeepSeek
“Some people question how much the government is spending on the India AI mission. But look at DeepSeek—$5.5 million and a really powerful model, all thanks to smart planning,” Vaishnaw said at an event in Odisha.
Vaishnaw further addressed the privacy concerns related to DeepSeek.
“DeepSeek is open source; we will host it on Indian servers soon… It is an open-source model. Like LLaMA (LLM by Meta), which is open source, this too can be hosted on Indian servers,” he added.
DeepSeek Sends Shockwaves In Global Tech
Based in Hangzhou, DeepSeek was founded in late 2023 by Liang Wenfeng, an entrepreneur who also runs the hedge fund High-Flyer.
Chinese startup DeepSeek with their open-source reasoning model R1 has challenged the narrative that entitles need access to large amounts of GPU for building frontier models.
US chipmaker Nvidia's stocks tumbled after the emergence of a low-cost Chinese generative AI model. Experts believe that DeepSeek can threaten American dominance in the fast-growing industry.
According to the initial performance results, the Chinese chatbot showed the ability to match the capacity of US AI pace-setters for a fraction of the investments made by American companies.
Shares in Nvidia, whose semiconductors power the AI industry, fell nearly 17 percent on Wall Street, erasing nearly $600 billion of its market value.
'Wake-UP Call for American AI'
US Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, in her first press conference, said that the emergence of DeepSeek is a wake-up call for American AI.
"The president was asked about DeepSeek last night on Air Force One when he gaggled for the third or fourth time throughout the weekend with members of the traveling press corps. The President said that he believes that this is a wake-up call to the American AI industry. The last administration sat on their hands and allowed China to rapidly develop this AI program," she said.
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Updated 18:36 IST, January 30th 2025