Jan 27 (Reuters) - OpenAI CEO Sam Altman called Chinese

startup DeepSeek's R1 AI model "impressive" on Monday, but

emphasized that OpenAI believes greater computing power was key

to their own success.

DeepSeek, a low-cost Chinese artificial intelligence model,

grabbed global attention last month when it stated in a paper

that training its DeepSeek-V3 model required less than $6

million in computing power using the lower-capability Nvidia

H800 chips.

DeepSeek-R1, launched last week, is 20 to 50 times more

affordable to use than OpenAI's o1 model, depending on the task,

according to a post on DeepSeek's official WeChat account.

"DeepSeek's r1 is an impressive model, particularly around

what they're able to deliver for the price," Altman said on X.

"But mostly we are excited to continue to execute on our

research roadmap and believe more compute is more important now

than ever before to succeed at our mission," Altman added.

DeepSeek's emergence has raised doubts about the reasoning

behind some U.S. tech companies' decision to pledge billions of

dollars in AI investment, and shares of several big tech

players, including Nvidia ( NVDA ), have been hit.

Nvidia ( NVDA ) saw a record one-day loss of $593 billion in market

value on Monday, marking the largest single-day loss for any

company on Wall Street.