OpenAI says it has found evidence that Chinese artificial intelligence start-up DeepSeek used the US company’s proprietary models to train its own open-source competitor, as concerns grow over a potential breach of intellectual property.

DeepSeek recently launched its open-source AI model called R1, aimed at mimicking human reasoning. The new model has taken on the dominance of US-based companies such as OpenAI, Google, and Meta in the AI space, while being significantly cheaper and more energy efficient.

Donald Trump’s AI tsar has claimed there’s ‘substantial evidence’ that DeepSeek leaned on OpenAI’s models to develop its own technology.