The non-US AI startups competing with Silicon Valley heavyweights

DeepSeek's cut-price generative AI offering makes it a direct rival to OpenAI and its US peers, but it's far from alone. Here are some alternative startups from outside the US that have received corporate backing.

(...) The startup that perhaps comes closest to DeepSeek’s approach is South Korea’s Moreh, which has created a software tool that allows users to build and optimise their own AI models using a more flexible, modular approach. And it can run on a far wider range of GPU chips than the ones produced by market leader Nvidia.

In other words, using Moreh’s software means an organisation can seek more affordable chips to build out its AI infrastructure, but its applications will still be compatible with Nvidia’s toolkit as well as machine learning frameworks from the likes of Facebook owner Meta and Google.

The company, which counts AMD and local telecoms firm KT as investors, released an open-source version of its Korean language LLM last month. Compatriot Upstage AI has raised over $100m for its enterprise generative AI platform, and the country looks well placed to grow following the National Assembly’s announcement of an AI regulatory framework last month.

Read more: Global Corporate Venturing