One of the defining features of the past few years has been the continued rise of the US tech giants. In 2025, however, momentum in innovation appears to have started to shift towards the other side of the Pacific. Chinese technology firms, long viewed as playing catch-up, are now emerging as contenders in the global AI race. Leading this surge is DeepSeek, a Chinese startup that, on 24 January 2025, unveiled its R1 large-language model — reportedly developed at a fraction of the cost of similar models from US counterparts…
