Hi and welcome to the first issue of Skillademia's AI newsletter. Three times a week, we’ll bring you the latest in AI and AI tools — in small, time-saving bits written in a language that’s easy to understand. We’ll share AI news that really matter and AI tools that can make your life easier. Let’s get right to it, then.

This Week’s AI Highlights

• Main Story:  DeepSeek — from market disruptor to global AI player.

• Why This Matters: The Chinese startup is proving that world-class AI can be built differently, challenging both technical and cost assumptions in the industry.

• Tool of the Week: DeepSeek's R1 model. When an AI assistant tops app charts globally and rivals ChatGPT's capabilities while maintaining significantly lower costs, it deserves the spotlight

DeepSeek: Beyond the Initial Shock

When DeepSeek first launched in January, it made headlines for wiping $593 billion off Nvidia's market value in a single day - the biggest one-day drop for any company in U.S. stock market history. But the real story is what's happened since.

How’s DeepSeek doing weeks after the initial boom:

• Since its launch in January, DeepSeek has surpassed 16 million downloads - nearly double what ChatGPT achieved in its first 18 days. It's currently the #1 free app across both App Store and Google Play, with over 10 million Android downloads alone.

• The cost difference for businesses is still mind-boggling, too: DeepSeek charges $0.55 per million input tokens and $2.19 per million output tokens, while OpenAI's GPT-4 charges $30 per million input tokens and $60 per million output tokens - making DeepSeek roughly 27 times cheaper for businesses processing large amounts of text.

• It's actually competing with and even outperforming industry-leading models like ChatGPT in key areas like coding, math, and general knowledge

So where does the new AI player stand now?

While DeepSeek initially claimed they trained their model for just $5.6 million, their actual investment is substantially higher - analysts estimate their total hardware spend could exceed $500 million, including their 2,048 H800 GPUs costing between $50-100 million.

The market impact was undeniable. Nvidia's stock plunged 17% on January 27, wiping out nearly $600 billion in market value - the largest single-day loss for any U.S. company in history.

Now, a couple weeks later, Nvidia has shown resilience, recovering significantly from the initial shock. The company has even partnered with DeepSeek to offer their R1 model through Nvidia's inference microservices platform. This suggests that rather than undermining the AI industry, DeepSeek's innovation is pushing it toward greater efficiency and accessibility.

For everyday users and businesses, this means powerful AI is finally becoming accessible to everyone, not just tech giants with deep pockets. DeepSeek has shown that high-quality AI can be both powerful and affordable - and that's a game-changer for the entire industry.

AI News Flash

France Secures €109B AI Investment - Macron reveals massive private sector AI commitment, including €50B UAE data center deal, positioning France as Europe's AI hub.

OpenAI Designs First Custom Chip - Company plans to finalize its debut AI processor by year-end, aiming to reduce Nvidia dependence with TSMC manufacturing partnership and 2026 mass production target.

Google Drops AI Weapons Ban - Tech giant removes 2018 pledge not to develop AI for weapons and surveillance, as DeepMind CEO frames shift as supporting "national security" amid employee backlash

Big Tech Plans $320B AI Investment - Amazon, Google, Meta, and Microsoft set to increase AI spending by 63% in 2025, despite investor concerns over capital allocation and DeepSeek-triggered market selloff.

Christie's AI Art Auction Faces Backlash - Over 3,000 artists demand cancellation of first-ever AI-dedicated sale featuring works from $10K to $250K, citing "mass theft" of copyrighted works used to train AI models without permission.

AI Tools to Try This Week

DeepSeek - A free, open-source AI chatbot that matches ChatGPT's capabilities but at a fraction of the cost. DeepSeek uses a unique "Mixture-of-Experts" approach that activates only necessary parts of its AI model, making it incredibly efficient.

Simplified - An all-in-one AI marketing platform that combines content creation, social media management, and team collaboration tools. Perfect for streamlining your marketing workflow.

Mubert - An AI music generation platform that creates unique, royalty-free soundtracks by analyzing millions of music samples. Ideal for content creators needing custom music.

SitesGPT - An AI website builder that creates professional websites in seconds. It's completely free and requires no coding or design skills.

AI Room Styles - An AI interior design tool offering 20 free monthly renderings with thousands of possible room configurations. Great for real estate agents and home decorators.

Before You Go

We've put together a quick video guide to the AI tools you can actually use every day - all completely free. Have a look 👇️ 

Thanks for Reading!

That’s it for the first issue of Skillademia's AI newsletter, and we're excited to bring you more easy-to-understand AI insights on wednesday.

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See you next week,

Skillademia

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