DeepSeek hits No. 1 on US Google Play after Apple success

China just threw a curveball into the tough Artificial Intelligence (AI) race as DeepSeek’s chatbot app just skyrocketed to the number 1 spot on both the Google Play Store and Apple App Store in the United States.

DeepSeek isn’t just another ChatGPT clone but it is pumping out open-source AI models that rival OpenAI, Anthropic, and Meta. This comes out at a fraction of the cost and with much older chips compared to those used by competitors. Its global launch has already triggered a massive crash for Wall Street. Big Tech stocks dropped by more than 10%, dragging the Nasdaq composite down by around 3%.

DeepSeek beats big AI players

As per the data shared by AppFigures, since launching in mid-January, DeepSeek has been downloaded over 1.2 million times on Google Play and 1.9 million times on the App Store. The chatbot app went on to hit the top spot on both the App Store and Google Play.

The company’s open-source AI models have gained industry attention. AppFigures mentioned that Elon’s competitor to ChatGPT, Grok, still hasn’t gotten 500k downloads as it is available in comparatively fewer countries, and that too on Apple’s App Store.

This comes as US President Donald Trump recently initiated a $500 billion Stargate AI Project to support US AI development. The project is supposed to gain support from OpenAI, SoftBank, Oracle, Nvidia, and Microsoft. Recent reports suggest that Trump has called the emergence of DeepSeek a “wake-up call” for American AI.

DeepSeek FOMO triggers market crash

The massive rise of DeepSeek has taken the financial markets by storm. The cheap AI model triggered a panic on Wall Street and also dragged the crypto market with it. Bitcoin price (BTC) dropped below the $100k mark but saw a recovery later. The global crypto market printed red indexes on Wednesday as its cumulative market cap dropped by around 2% to stand at $3.45 trillion.

This has led to a massive crash in the performance of AI-linked crypto tokens. Top AI and big data tokens saw a drop of around 4% in the last 24 hours to $43.11 billion. Their total 24-hour trading volume dropped down by 25% to $2.75 billion.

The FOMO around DeepSeek has also led to the creation of dozens of meme coins and hoax websites, which have swindled many crypto users. More than 70 coins have emerged online in a short span of time and are profiling themselves as official DeepSeek tokens.

To prevent any potential harm, we reiterate that @deepseek_ai is our sole official account on Twitter/X.

Any accounts:
– representing us
– using identical avatars
– using similar names
are impersonations.

Please stay vigilant to avoid being misled!

— DeepSeek (@deepseek_ai) January 28, 2025

Meanwhile, the Chinese AI company hasn’t launched any token and doesn’t have any relationship to crypto. In an X post, it stated that any accounts representing them, using identical avatars and similar names are impersonations.

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