DeepSeek's Record-Breaking Traffic and the Overlooked Industry Signals

Introduction

DeepSeek has recently achieved a remarkable milestone, with its daily active users exceeding 30 million and its total user base surpassing 100 million, breaking the speed record previously set by OpenAI. This AI newcomer continues to dominate the news headlines and has created a phenomenal growth trend. However, behind this surge in popularity, there are three important industry signals that have gone largely unnoticed.

DeepSeek's Phenomenal Growth

According to data from QUEST MOBILE, as of February 3, DeepSeek's daily active users had surpassed 30 million and were still growing. Extraordinary Research provided the latest data showing that within two weeks of the official launch of the DeepSeek app, the total number of users across all platforms had exceeded 100 million, with daily active users exceeding 40 million, surpassing ChatGPT to become the fastest-growing AI application globally.

In the global application market, the record for the fastest user growth is held by Threads, which reached 100 million users within five days of its launch. However, the success of Threads was largely due to the ecosystem support from Meta. DeepSeek, without the guidance of a social ecosystem or deliberate commercial investment, managed to attract a vast user base within just two weeks, breaking the upper limit set by ByteDance's Douyin for AI applications.

Signal One: AI Technology Crosses the "Chasm"

In "Crossing the Chasm," Geoffrey Moore proposed the theory that high-tech products face a difficult transition from early adopters to the mass market, known as the "chasm." The ability to cross this chasm is crucial for the commercialization of high-tech products. Looking back at the domestic AI application market, Douyin, as a leader in AI, once set an upper limit of 20 million daily active users. The difficulty in breaking through this plateau was one of the reasons for ByteDance's strategic shift at the end of last year and a key factor for many domestic AI companies to choose to go global or focus on B2B.

While everyone was waiting for AI applications to slowly cross the chasm, DeepSeek achieved a lightning-fast victory with its astonishing growth. The value of this phenomenal growth is not just about technological hype; it has opened up a broader market space for later entrants.

Signal Two: China's AI Market is Validated

The explosive growth of DeepSeek has once again demonstrated the huge potential of China's market. With the world's largest internet user base, China has always been a fertile ground for application innovation. During the mobile internet era, China gave birth to super applications such as WeChat, Alipay, and Douyin. In the AI era, could China still produce super applications? This question had been raised by many last year.

The rapid rise of DeepSeek in China indicates that China remains the largest consumer market, and its vast user base will be the foundation for the outbreak of AI applications. The next AI super application may still emerge in China.

Signal Three: Domestic Computing Power Ecosystem Sees an Opportunity

The traffic surge of DeepSeek has undoubtedly presented a historic opportunity for the domestic computing power ecosystem. DeepSeek, focused on R&D, did not anticipate this massive traffic and was not fully prepared to handle the huge user demand. This has instead become an opportunity for the expansion of the domestic computing power ecosystem. Many domestic computing power vendors are actively adapting to DeepSeek, hoping to gain a share of the AI wave.

Will this be the beginning of the prosperity of China's development ecosystem? Will it also feed back into the optimization of underlying hardware? These are questions worth our attention.

Conclusion

The phenomenal growth of DeepSeek marks the beginning of the widespread commercialization of AI technology. Looking back, there are many similar examples in history. In the early days of the computer industry, mainframes were the dominant force, expensive and serving only a few large enterprises and research institutions. Even after the emergence of personal computers, they were still only accessible to a select few. It wasn't until 1982, with the launch of the Commodore 64, which used standardized components to reduce costs and was priced at $595, far below the market price, and could run games and educational software, that it quickly became the best-selling home computer in history.

DeepSeek R1 may be the Commodore 64 of the AI era. It brings not only the current traffic but also an era of application innovation. The success of DeepSeek has shown that AI technology has crossed the chasm and entered a new phase of commercialization. As the AI industry continues to evolve, we can expect more innovative applications and breakthroughs in the future.