DeepSeek was only founded in 2023. The company is based in Hangzhou, an important port city in Eastern China that has been a strategic hub along the Silk Roads for thousands of years. DeepSeek has been building large language models (LLMs) since the company was created, but the[ 2025 release of their R1 LLM challenged](https://www.techtarget.com/whatis/feature/

This is an interesting thought experiment that is worth exploring for anyone involved in buying or selling enterprise services. Think about two companies in your industry that essentially offer the same services, but in an entirely different way. Banking is a good example. There are several European banks that have been continuously operating for almost 300 years. You can imagine how some of these bank branches look. I

Asynchronous customer support using messaging services has been around for over a decade now, but there are some markets where these apps are only just starting to take off. You might be surprised by some of the places where they are now used by most customers on a daily basis. The most popular messaging app across Europe and the US is WhatsApp. There are others out there, such as Telegram, Signal, and Viber,