The Data on DeepSeek

Today's Lineup 🎙️

• DeepSeek Dominated Podcast Conversations

  • DeepSeek’s Podcast Coverage in Focus

  • DeepSeek’s Coverage Reach

  • Competitor/Peer Presence in DeepSeek Coverage

  • Insights related to OpenAI / ChatGPT mentions:

  • Insights related to Nvidia mentions:

  • Insights related to competition and politics:

  • Key takeaways from DeepSeek’s media moment

• How to Find Podcast Transcripts on Podchaser

DeepSeek Dominated Podcast Conversations

AI’s been all the rage since ChatGPT hit the scene, but here’s the plot twist: this week, a scrappy newcomer called DeepSeek stirred up a media storm on a global scale. DeepSeek—practically an unknown outfit from China—rolled out an open-source model that costs about as much as your daily latte, yet still matches the big-budget AI giants’ performance. Talk about an underdog story. The fallout? Nvidia got hammered in the stock market, while DeepSeek’s new app leapfrogged OpenAI’s ChatGPT to snag the top free spot on the Apple Store. Looks like the AI world just got a serious shake-up—and everyone’s paying attention.

Since this story seemingly came out of nowhere, we were curious to find out how podcasts covered it. Using Podchaser Pro’s monitoring capabilities, we uncovered the following:

DeepSeek’s Podcast Coverage in Focus

The nearly perpendicular line that occurs at the moment of DeepSeek’s virality, as shown in the graph above, embodies every upstart brand’s dream—a media response so massive that it eclipses all other coverage, even during a news cycle that included the US presidential inauguration and resulting policy news. Overall, much of the DeepSeek coverage had a mostly neutral tone, although there was no shortage of angles eliciting concern, particularly regarding the upending impact on the AI industry, resulting stock market chaos, as well as possible threats to national security.

Peak mentions by day:

While coverage reached a fever pitch in the five days between January 27 and January 31, the first mention of DeepSeek actually appeared more than a week earlier, on January 17.

Interestingly, the DeepSeek’s earliest mentions came from international podcasts. Most notably, IA Sob Controle - Inteligência Artificial, the #1 Tech podcast (per Apple and Spotify charts) in Brazil.

DeepSeek’s Coverage Reach

How many podcast listeners tuned into DeepSeek coverage? The numbers:

• Total episode reach of mentions - 23,777,957

• Average episode reach of mentions - 6,147

• Total mentions - 5,004

Competitor/Peer Presence in DeepSeek Coverage

The research also examined how often competitors, peer organizations, and related keywords showed up in podcasts mentioning DeepSeek. China and Trump have the highest percentage of mentions. Competitor OpenAI and its ChatGPT product easily outpaced mentions of other AI tools including Google’s Gemini, Anthropic, and Claude. Chipmaker Nvidia, the most impacted stock from DeepSeek’s coverage blitz, had nearly 800 companion mentions.

Insights related to OpenAI / ChatGPT mentions:

Common among this coverage is the DeepSeek R1 model’s comparison to OpenAI’s o1 model, with some sources stating that DeepSeek’s model has achieved comparable or superior performance in various benchmarks.

Apart from performance, discussions also probed for questions related to capital efficiency between the two rival firms.

Insights related to Nvidia mentions:

Much of this coverage focused on Nvidia’s stock, which experienced significant drops following the emergence of DeepSeek, with investors concerned that DeepSeek’s low-cost model could reduce the demand for Nvidia’s expensive chips.

Insights related to competition and politics:

U.S. media often expressed concern and alarm about DeepSeek’s rapid advancement, viewing it as a threat to U.S. technological leadership and dominance in the AI sector—reflecting a sense of urgency to respond to the challenge. In some cases, podcasts referred to the story as a “wake-up call.”

Several American sources use the term “Sputnik moment” to describe the impact of DeepSeek, highlighting the sense of alarm and competition in the U.S.

Key takeaways from DeepSeek’s media moment

The AI landscape has experience one hype cycle after another. The difference between this cycle and its predecessors? Geopolitics.

The timing and trajectory of this story was further heightened by the long unfolding drama between the US government and China-owned TikTok. Years of shuttling between “will they, won’t they” ban TikTok in the US heightened tension between the competing nations.

DeepSeek’s emergence and expansive coverage suggest an elongated story thread, which provides podcasters ample content in the months to come.

How to Find Podcast Transcripts on Podchaser

Did you know Podchaser has podcast episode transcripts? A whole lot of ‘em, actually. We recently expanded podcast transcript coverage to the Top 24k shows.

If you want to access episode transcripts and find mentions of the DeepSeek story, follow these steps:

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