Aravind Srinivas congratulates China's DeepSeek AI for beating ChatGPT at being no.1 on App Store

Aravind Srinivas said he was looking forward to using all their models for search, assistant, and agents this year.

Perplexity AI's Indian-origin CEO Aravind Srinivas has congratulated China's Deepseek AI for beating ChatGPT and becoming the most downloaded app on the US App Store – a feat that no other language model could achieve in such a short duration. In fact, the best that Perplexity could do was get a spot at number 8 while ChatGPT reigned at the top of the list.

Taking to X on Monday, Srinivas wrote, "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."

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 R1, developed by the Hangzhou-based startup DeepSeek, is an advanced large language model designed to enhance reasoning and analytical capabilities. Its rise in popularity can be attributed to its competitive pricing and impressive performance. Unlike OpenAI’s o1, which charges $15 per million input tokens, DeepSeek R1 costs just $0.55 per million input tokens. Additionally, the model has reportedly demonstrated superior performance in coding tasks, achieving a 97 percent success rate, and outperforming OpenAI’s o1 in certain benchmarks.

While social media platforms are abuzz with comparisons between DeepSeek R1 and other AI models, it has also threatened tech dominance and triggered a selloff in US and Japan stocks.

US stock futures nosedived, led by steep losses in Nasdaq contracts, and Japanese chipmaker stocks faced heavy selling. On the other hand, Chinese and Hong Kong tech shares are surging on optimism over DeepSeek’s rapid rise, raising fresh questions about the future dominance of US tech giants like Nvidia and Google.