A new report from financial services company Ramp shows DeepSeek gaining significant traction among US firms seeking cheaper alternatives to Anthropic and OpenAI. The Chinese AI company ranked first for breakout growth relative to size across Ramp customers in June 2026. This trend follows DeepSeek's launch in January, which initially caused concern in Silicon Valley about potential censorship and data security implications with Chinese government oversight.

American firms are directly using DeepSeek's hosted services rather than running open-source models locally, meaning internal data flows through Chinese servers. DeepSeek's terms explicitly state they collect and store user data in the People's Republic of China, where laws require cooperation with government intelligence requests without the warrant or court process available in the US.

Security experts warn US companies should treat any data fed into DeepSeek as potentially accessible to a foreign government. While DeepSeek offers cheaper per-token rates, the actual cost includes potential data exposure. Ramp economist Ara Kharazian, who tracks this data professionally, expressed surprise that American firms would use the service at all. The growing adoption raises serious questions about corporate data security protocols.