A savvy software engineer recently acquired the digital realm ‘OGOpenAI.com.’ Intriguingly, he forwarded its traffic to DeepSeek, an emerging Chinese AI lab making its name in the realm of open-source AI.
Ananay Arora, the engineer, shared with TechCrunch that he bought the domain for a cost equivalent to a Chipotle meal, with aspirations of reselling it at a higher price later.
The redirection of ‘OGOpenAI.com’ to DeepSeek is an apparent homage to the Chinese lab’s penchant to release groundbreaking AI models in an open format, reminiscent of OpenAI’s early years. DeepSeek models, like OpenAI’s historic ones such as Point-E and Jukebox, can be exploited offline by developers with the necessary hardware.
DeepSeek grabbed the AI industry’s attention when it rolled out an open version of the DeepSeek-R1 model. This model supposedly outperforms OpenAI’s ‘o1’ on certain benchmarks—a bold claim that has sparked interest and ignited debate among AI experts.
Arora cited a deleted post by Aravind Srinivas, the CEO of ‘Perplexity’, as his inspiration for purchasing the domain. In the post, Srinivas drew a parallel between DeepSeek and the early “open” years of OpenAI.
DeepSeek, alongside Alibaba’s Qwen, is crowned among the Chinese AI labs that currently offer open-source alternatives to OpenAI’s staple models. With the rising prominence of Chinese AI labs, the U.S. government might need to heighten their efforts in controlling China’s AI sphere, especially considering the impending chip export restrictions.
Original source: Read the full article on TechCrunch
