DeepSeek AI Statistics: User Growth, Market Share & Impact (2025)

DeepSeek AI has rapidly emerged as a significant force in the artificial intelligence landscape. Founded in 2023 in Hangzhou, China, this innovative company, backed by the Chinese hedge fund High-Flyer, is challenging established players with its focus on cost-effective and open-source AI models. Despite navigating complex challenges, including U.S. sanctions impacting access to advanced AI chips, DeepSeek has successfully developed high-performance large language models (LLMs) at a notably lower cost than many of its competitors.

This article, brought to you by Merlio, delves into DeepSeek AI's background, strategic approach, key offerings, global influence, and the latest statistics from January 2025 highlighting its impressive growth trajectory.

Company Overview and Mission

DeepSeek AI was founded on July 17, 2023, with a clear vision: to democratize access to artificial intelligence through open-source technology. Unlike proprietary AI systems, DeepSeek makes its algorithms and model architectures publicly available. This transparency encourages global collaboration among researchers and developers, fostering innovation and improvement within the AI community.

Headquartered in Hangzhou, China, the company is led by Founder and CEO Liang Wenfeng. With a team of under 200 employees, DeepSeek has quickly made its mark. Its flagship model, DeepSeek-R1, demonstrates performance competitive with leading models like OpenAI's GPT-4o and Meta's LLaMA 3.1. A key differentiator is its remarkably low training cost, reportedly around $6 million, a fraction of the estimated $100 million spent on models like GPT-4. This efficiency allows DeepSeek to offer powerful AI capabilities at a competitive price point.

DeepSeek AI Assistant

A notable product is the official DeepSeek AI assistant, available for free. Powered by the advanced DeepSeek-V3 model (with over 600 billion parameters), this AI assistant sets global standards and performs comparably to top international models across various benchmarks. Users benefit from fast response times and comprehensive features designed to provide efficient answers and enhance productivity. As of January 2025, the DeepSeek app holds the #1 category rank on Google Play with approximately 3.9 million monthly downloads.

Market Performance and Growth Metrics (January 2025)

DeepSeek AI has experienced explosive growth in traffic and user engagement, positioning itself among the world's most visited AI platforms.

Website Traffic and Engagement

• Total Visits (January 2025): 277.9 million (a significant +2256.53% increase from the previous month).
• Global Website Rank: #141
• Country Rank (China): #31
• Industry Rank (Programming & Developer Software): #8
• Average Visit Duration: 5 minutes 33 seconds
• Pages per Visit: 4.39
• Bounce Rate: 30.85%

These metrics underscore DeepSeek's rapid ascent and strong user engagement.

Top Referral Sources

Referral traffic constitutes 5.24% of DeepSeek’s website visits, originating from key platforms:

• GitHub (15.27%)
• Namu.wiki (11.73%)
• Hugging Face (7.37%)
• ChatGPT.com (5.66%)
• Open WeChat (3.91%)

Referrals are primarily driven by communities focused on programming, developer software, and AI research.

Search Performance

Search engines are a major driver of traffic to DeepSeek's website.

• Organic Search: Accounts for 43.96% of traffic. Branded searches dominate (97%), indicating strong brand recognition. Top organic search terms include "Deepseek," "Deep seek," "Deepseek R1," and "Deepseek AI," all showing remarkable growth percentages.
• Paid Search: While a smaller portion of marketing efforts, paid search focuses on brand terms like "Deepseek," "Deepseek AI," and "Deepseek R1."

Social Media Presence

Social media contributes 1.82% of traffic, with YouTube being the primary platform (52.28%), followed by X (Twitter) (18.55%), Facebook (7.88%), WhatsApp WebApp (4.61%), and LinkedIn (4.46%). DeepSeek leverages influencer collaborations and AI content creators to reach its target audience of developers and AI enthusiasts.

Display Advertising

DeepSeek's display advertising targets AI and tech-interested audiences through networks like Taboola (39.01%), Blogger.com (25.69%), MGID (5.65%), and Cuelinks (3.16%).

User Demographics

DeepSeek's user base is predominantly male and leans towards younger demographics:

• Gender: Male (66.12%), Female (33.88%)
• Age: 18-24 (23.65%), 25-34 (33.51%), 35-44 (19.34%), 45-54 (12.15%), 55-64 (7.02%), 65+ (4.32%)

DeepSeek AI Models and Innovations

DeepSeek is a leader in the open-source AI movement, making its models accessible for global innovation. Key model releases and milestones include:

• DeepSeek-R1: Early major LLM, comparable to top models.
• DeepSeek-MoE (Base & Chat): Efficient Mixture of Experts models.
• DeepSeek-Math (Base, Instruct, RL): Specialized models for mathematical reasoning.
• DeepSeek-V2: Released May 2024, notable for its role in triggering an AI price war in China.
• DeepSeek-V3: Base and Chat models launched December 2024.
• DeepSeek-R1 Lite (API & Chat): Available since November 2024.
• DeepSeek AI Assistant App: Free chatbot launched January 2025, quickly gaining popularity.

Global Impact and Challenges

DeepSeek's strategy of combining aggressive pricing with an open-source approach has significantly disrupted the AI industry, particularly in China, where it has spurred competitors like ByteDance, Tencent, Baidu, and Alibaba to reduce their AI service pricing. This has led to DeepSeek being dubbed the "Pinduoduo of AI," referencing a Chinese e-commerce platform known for low prices.

However, DeepSeek faces scrutiny regarding compliance with Chinese censorship regulations. Its AI models restrict responses on politically sensitive topics, which has led to bans in some countries, such as Australia.

Furthermore, the company must navigate the challenges posed by U.S. sanctions limiting access to advanced AI training chips. DeepSeek has strategically stockpiled an estimated 10,000 Nvidia A100 GPUs and focused on optimizing training efficiency to mitigate these constraints.

Conclusion

DeepSeek AI is undeniably a disruptive force in the artificial intelligence landscape. Its commitment to open-source models, combined with a focus on cost efficiency, positions it as a significant challenger to global AI leaders. The statistics from January 2025 vividly illustrate its rapid growth and market penetration. While facing regulatory complexities and geopolitical pressures, DeepSeek's strategic innovations and its widely adopted AI assistant app indicate its potential to continue reshaping the future of AI.

SEO FAQ

Q1: What is DeepSeek AI? A1: DeepSeek AI is a Chinese artificial intelligence company founded in 2023, known for developing cost-effective, open-source large language models (LLMs) and challenging established AI industry players.

Q2: Is DeepSeek AI open-source? A2: Yes, DeepSeek AI is committed to open-source principles, making its models' algorithms and architectures publicly accessible to promote research and development.

Q3: How fast is DeepSeek AI growing? A3: According to January 2025 statistics, DeepSeek AI saw a massive +2256.53% increase in website visits from the previous month, reaching 277.9 million visits, indicating extremely rapid growth.

Q4: What is the DeepSeek AI Assistant? A4: The DeepSeek AI Assistant is a free chatbot application powered by the DeepSeek-V3 model. It offers fast and comprehensive AI assistance and achieved the #1 category rank on Google Play in January 2025.

Q5: What challenges does DeepSeek AI face? A5: DeepSeek AI faces challenges including compliance with Chinese censorship laws, which has led to bans in some countries, and navigating U.S. sanctions that restrict access to advanced AI training chips.