Someone bought the domain ‘OGOpenAI’ and redirected it to a Chinese AI lab

A software engineer has bought the website “OGOpenAI.com” and redirected it to DeepSeek, a Chinese AI lab that’s been making waves in the open source AI world lately.

Software engineer Ananay Arora tells TechCrunch that he bought the domain name for “less than a Chipotle meal,” and that he plans to sell it for more.

The move was an apparent nod to how DeepSeek releases cutting-edge open AI models, just as OpenAI did in its early years. DeepSeek’s models can be used offline and for free by any developer with the necessary hardware, similar to older OpenAI models like Point-E and Jukebox.

DeepSeek caught the attention of AI enthusiasts last week when it released an open version of its DeepSeek-R1 model, which the company claims performs better than OpenAI’s o1 on certain benchmarks. Outside of models such as Whisper, OpenAI rarely releases its flagship AI in an “open” format these days, drawing criticism from some in the AI industry. In fact, OpenAI’s reticence to release its most powerful models is cited in a lawsuit from Elon Musk, who claims that the startup isn’t staying true to its original nonprofit mission.

Arora says he was inspired by a now-deleted post on X from Perplexity’s CEO, Aravind Srinivas, comparing DeepSeek to OpenAI in its more “open” days. “I thought, hey, it would be cool to have [the] domain go to DeepSeek for fun,” Arora told TechCrunch via DM.

DeepSeek joins Alibaba’s Qwen in the list of Chinese AI labs releasing open alternatives to OpenAI’s models.

The American government has tried to curb China’s AI labs for years with chip export restrictions, but it may need to do more if the latest AI models coming out of the country are any indication.

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