(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.