Liang Wenfeng, who founded the firm just two years ago, says his aim is ‘not to lose money, nor to make huge profits’

• James Vincent: DeepSeek panic reveals an AI world ready to blow
• Nils Pratley: the stock market is terrible at valuing tech revolutions

After years of worrying in the US that its artificial intelligence ambitions could be leapfrogged by Beijing, the biggest threat to Silicon Valley’s hegemony has come not from one of China’s big four tech firms, but from a previously little known startup.

Rather than Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent or Xiaomi topping the iOS app store with its latest chatbot this week and sending the markets reeling, it is DeepSeek – founded less than two years ago – that is being credited with a “Sputnik moment” in the global AI development race.