Chinese AI startup DeepSeek is doubling down on open-source innovation, announcing plans to publicly release five new code repositories next week. In a post on social media platform X, the company described the move as “small but sincere progress” toward greater transparency in AI development.
“These humble building blocks in our online service have been documented, deployed, and battle-tested in production,” the company stated.
Follow THE FUTURE on LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, X and Telegram
DeepSeek made waves last month when it unveiled its open-source R1 reasoning model, a system that rivaled Western AI models in performance but was developed at a fraction of the cost. Unlike many AI firms in China and the U.S. that guard their proprietary models, DeepSeek has positioned itself as a leader in open-source AI.
The company’s elusive founder, Liang Wenfeng, reinforced this philosophy in a rare interview last July, emphasizing that commercialization was not DeepSeek’s primary focus. Instead, he framed open-source development as a cultural movement with strategic advantages.
“Having others follow your innovation gives a great sense of accomplishment,” Liang said. “In fact, open source is more of a cultural behavior than a commercial one, and contributing to it earns us respect.”
The newly released repositories will provide infrastructure support for DeepSeek’s existing open-source models, enhancing their capabilities and accessibility. This follows the company’s Tuesday launch of Native Sparse Attention (NSA), a new algorithm designed to optimize long-context training and inference.
DeepSeek’s influence is growing rapidly. Since last month, its user base has surged, making it China’s most popular chatbot service. As of January 11, the platform had 22.2 million daily active users, surpassing Douban’s 16.95 million, according to Aicpb.com, a Chinese analytics site.
With its latest commitment to transparency and collaboration, DeepSeek continues to challenge the AI industry’s dominant closed-source model, reshaping the future of artificial intelligence on a global scale.
