DeepSeek’s R1 model proved so popular this January that it dethroned OpenAI’s ChatGPT as the most downloaded free app on Apple’s US App Store. Much of the buzz derives from its efficiency.

Before the US banned exports of A100 Nvidia chips to China, DeepSeek’s developers reportedly built up a store, which they then combined with cheaper, less sophisticated chips, resulting in a model that rivals ChatGPT’s capabilities while allegedly requiring a fraction of the memory, energy, and – as a result – money to create, train, and run. But given that 96% of people consider the ethics of artificial intelligence to be important and that over a ten-year period companies with strong ethical cultures tend to outperform their peers by 12.6%.

Whether DeepSeek can sustain its extraordinary momentum might come down to how its ethical credentials compare to OpenAI’s. Let’s take a look.