Computer scientist and AI expert Andrew Ng didn't explicitly mention the significance of R1 being an open source model, but highlighted how the DeepSeek disruption is a boon for developers, since it allows access that is otherwise gatekept by Big Tech.

Development on the first DeepSeek R1 clone might have started with the announcement of the Open-R1 open-source project.

The AI community is rightfully buzzing about the new model DeepSeek R1 and is racing to digest what it means. Created by DeepSeek, a Chinese AI startup that emerged from the High-Flyer hedge fund, their flagship model shows performance comparable to models in OpenAI’s o1 series on key reasoning benchmarks,