President Donald Trump may be considering a ban on Chinese AI model DeepSeek in the United States. The New York Times reported on Wednesday that the Trump administration is considering new restrictions on the Chinese AI lab DeepSeek that would limit it from buying Nvidia’s AI chips and potentially bar Americans from accessing its AI services.
DeepSeek AI made waves when it launched in the western market, especially since it was touted as having been developed for a fraction of the cost of western AI models.
READ: China disrupts AI market with DeepSeek: A better, cheaper version of ChatGPT? (January 27, 2025)
What is DeepSeek AI?
DeepSeek AI is a Chinese artificial intelligence startup founded in 2023, specializing in large language models (LLMs) and advanced AI technology. The company has gained significant attention for its DeepSeek-V3 model, which uses a Mixture-of-Experts (MoE) architecture. This allows the model to activate only a portion of its parameters during operation, making it highly efficient and cost-effective, with 671 billion parameters and 37 billion activated per token. The DeepSeek-V3 model is considered comparable to OpenAI’s GPT-4 in terms of performance but is more affordable.
DeepSeek is known for promoting open access to its models, releasing them under the MIT License, which has contributed to widespread adoption. The company’s chatbot gained traction, even surpassing ChatGPT in U.S. iOS downloads in January 2025. However, DeepSeek has faced scrutiny over its acquisition of advanced Nvidia chips, raising concerns about data privacy and misuse of U.S. technology.
READ: Apple CEO comes out in support and praise for DeepSeek (January 31, 2025)
The restrictions are reportedly part of the Trump administration’s effort to compete with China on AI. Months after DeepSeek jolted both Silicon Valley and Wall Street, U.S. officials seem to be weighing several options to limit China’s access to American technologies and consumers.
Nvidia, Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), and other chipmakers are investing heavily in the United States. AMD recently announced its plans to move forward with production of its key processor chips at Taiwan Semiconductors’ (TSMC) production site in Arizona.