The Globe and Mail reports in its Saturday edition that Nvidia, the giant of artificial intelligence, faced a surprising challenger: Chinese start-up DeepSeek. The Globe's guest columnist John Rapley writes that Nvidia has released the R1 AI model, which appears to rival or surpass ChatGPT, and is available for free with a lower development cost. The R1 model is open source, allowing for easy integration into other software. While investors are cautious about DeepSeek's claims, developers who have experimented with the technology are impressed by its capabilities. Many observers question whether DeepSeek was truly developed cheaply, suggesting possible Chinese government subsidies or greater use of Nvidia chips than disclosed. Microsoft-backed OpenAI claims the Chinese firm may have stolen some of its intellectual property, a point echoed by David Sacks, President Donald Trump's "AI czar." Until evidence surfaces, these counterclaims should be viewed with the same skepticism as DeepSeek's statements. Since the cost of DeepSeek remains so low, the barriers to entry have tumbled. AI may now really begin to transform our lives, improving efficiency in many fields from the public sector to medicine, in small ways and large.