Accounting
DeepSeek’s overnight fame strains its systems, draws attacks
Talk of an artificial-intelligence upstart in China behind a formidable ChatGPT rival had been building for days.
At the World Economic Forum in Davos last week, some
Then, within the past 36 hours, interest in the startup exploded. Silicon Valley heavyweights including investor Marc Andreessen and AI godfather and chief Meta Platforms Inc. scientist Yann LeCun began
By the end of the weekend, DeepSeek’s AI assistant had rocketed to the top of Apple Inc.’s iPhone download charts and ranked among the top downloads on Google’s Play Store, straining the startup’s systems so much that the service went down for more than an hour. The company was eventually forced to limit signups to those with mainland China telephone numbers — but claimed the move was the result of “large-scale malicious attacks” on its services.
The fallout from the seemingly overnight surge in interest around DeepSeek was swift, and severe: The company’s AI model, which it claims to have developed at a fraction of the cost of rivals without meaningfully sacrificing performance, drove a nearly $1
By Monday afternoon, it was clear the overwhelming interest in DeepSeek’s services was taking a toll on the company’s system. “Currently, only registration with a mainland China mobile phone number is supported,” the startup said on its
It was the company’s longest major outage since it started reporting its status. Unlike some rivals, DeepSeek’s assistant shows its work and reasoning as it addresses a user’s written query or prompt. Reviews on Apple’s app store and on Alphabet Inc.’s Android Play Store praised that transparency.
Founded by quant fund chief Liang Wenfeng, DeepSeek’s open-sourced AI model is spurring a rethink of the billions of dollars that companies have been spending to stay ahead in the AI race.
“While it remains to be seen if DeepSeek will prove to be a viable, cheaper alternative in the long term, initial worries are centered on whether U.S. tech giants’ pricing power is being threatened and if their massive AI spending needs re-evaluation,” said Jun Rong Yeap of IG Asia.
Like all other Chinese-made AI models, DeepSeek self-censors on topics deemed politically sensitive in China. Unlike ChatGPT, DeepSeek deflects questions about Tiananmen Square, President Xi Jinping or the possibility of China invading Taiwan. That may prove jarring to international users, who may not have come into direct contact with Chinese chatbots earlier.
The initial success provides a counterpoint to expectations that the most advanced AI will require increasing amounts of computing power and energy —- an assumption that has driven shares in Nvidia and its suppliers to all-time highs.
The exact cost of development and energy consumption of DeepSeek are not fully documented, but the startup has presented figures that suggest its cost was only a fraction of OpenAI’s latest models. That a small and efficient AI model emerged from China, which has been subject to escalating U.S. trade sanctions on advanced Nvidia chips, is also challenging the effectiveness of such measures.
“The U.S. is great at research and innovation and especially breakthrough, but China is better at engineering,” computer scientist Kai-Fu Lee said earlier this month at the Asian Financial Forum in Hong Kong. “In this day and age, when you have limited compute power and money, you learn how to build things very efficiently.”
For its part, Nvidia — the biggest provider of chips used to train AI software —
Nvidia’s statement appeared to dismiss some analysts’ and experts’ suspicions that the Chinese startup couldn’t have made the breakthrough it has claimed. The company also pointed out that inference, the work of actually running AI models and using it to process data and make predictions, nonetheless requires a lot of its products.
“Inference requires significant numbers of Nvidia GPUs and high-performance networking,” the company said.
Big Four firm PwC announced new agentic AI capacities, including a model that proactively identifies areas of value leakage and acts inside the tools teams already use to fix them itself.
The new solution,
The software, which is supported by PwC’s recently released
The system connects directly into ERP environments, continuously monitors key metrics, and acts inside the tools teams already use. For example, a supply chain agent might detect rising shipping costs and automatically reroute deliveries to reduce spend. Finance agents can spot and correct billing errors before they reach the customer. Clients typically see measurable efficiency gains in the first quarter, with continued improvements over time as the system learns and adapts.
“Too many transformations still rely on one-off pilots and stale data, stretching the gap from insight to impact and suffocating ROI,” said Saurabh Sarbaliya, PwC’s principal for enterprise strategy and value. “Agent Powered Performance flips the economics by distilling PwC’s industry transformation playbooks into AI agents that turn static insights into compounding gains, without rebooting each time.”
Agent Powered Performance is platform-agnostic and built on an open architecture so it can work across different LLMs based on client preferences and task-specific needs. It works with major enterprise platforms including Oracle, SAP, Workday and Guidewire.
Agent OS Model Context Protocol
PwC also
By integrating this standard, agent systems registered as MCP servers can be used by any authorized AI agent. This reduces redundant integration work and the overhead of writing custom logic for each new use case. By standardizing how agents invoke tools and handle responses, MCP also simplifies the interface between agents and enterprise systems, which will serve to reduce development time, lower testing complexity, and cut deployment risk. Finally, any interaction between an agent and an MCP server is authenticated, authorized and logged, and access policies are enforced at the protocol level, which means that compliance and control are native to the system—not layered on after the fact.
This means that agents are no longer siloed. Instead, they can operate as part of a coordinated, governed system that can grow as needs evolve, as MCP support provides the interface to external tools and systems. This enables organizations to move beyond isolated pilots toward integrated systems where agents don’t just reason, but act inside real business workflows. It marks a shift from experimentation to adoption, from isolated tools to scalable, governed intelligence.
Research Composer
Finally, a PwC spokesperson said the firm has also launched a new internal tool for its professionals called Research Composer, a patent-pending AI research agent embedded in the firm’s ChatPwC suite, designed to accelerate insight generation by combining web data with PwC-uploaded content.
Professionals will use the Research Composer to produce in-depth, citation-backed reports for either the firm or its clients. The solution is intended to enhance the quality of client work by equipping teams with research and strategic analysis capabilities.
The AI agent prompts users through a step-by-step research workflow, allowing them to shape how reports are packaged—tailoring the output to meet strategic needs. For example, a manager in advisory services might use Research Composer to evaluate white space opportunities across industries or geographies, drawing from internal reports and up-to-date market data.
Eide Bailly, a Top 25 Firm based in Fargo, North Dakota, is growing its presence in the Pacific Northwest by adding Traner Smith, based in Edmonds, Washington, effective June 2, 2025.
Traner Smith’s team includes two partners and 16 staff members and specializes in tax compliance and advisory services. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. Eide Bailly ranked No. 19 on
Eide Bailly already has offices in Seattle, but hopes to grow further in the Pacific Northwest. “We’re pleased to welcome the talented team at Traner Smith to Eide Bailly,” said Eide Bailly managing partner and CEO Jeremy Hauk in a statement Monday. “Their expertise with high-net-worth individuals, real estate and privately held businesses aligns well with our strengths, and their client-centric approach is a perfect cultural fit. Having an office in Edmonds, Washington, is a great complement to our existing presence in Seattle. Together, we’re poised to deliver even greater value to families and businesses in the Seattle metro area.”
“Joining Eide Bailly is a natural next step for us — it provides access to deeper technical resources in areas like state and local tax, national tax, succession planning and international tax while allowing us to continue the personalized service our clients value,” said Kevin Smith, a partner at Traner Smith, in a statement.
“With this expanded support and platform, we’re excited to grow our reach, elevate what we do best, and help more clients than ever before,” said Shane Summer, another partner at Traner Smith, in a statement.
Eide Bailly has announced several other mergers in recent weeks. Earlier this month, it added
In 2023, Eide Bailly added
Top 100 firm
“We began working with Knuula in Spring 2024 to streamline our engagement letter process,” said Don Murphy, Managing Member of BMSS. “It quickly became clear that Knuula was not only a strong solution for us, but also an ideal partner in advancing industry-wide automation.”
While the specific terms of the deal were not disclosed, a spokesperson with Knuula said that, after this investment, BMSS and a collection of 21 of their partners now own 13% of the company. The investment represents not some passive revenue deal but an active collaboration between the two companies, with the spokesperson saying they will be working closely together on things like product development, new features, improvements, and networking.
The deal comes about a year after Knuula integrated with QuickFee, a receivables management platform for professional service providers, which allowed users to have engagement letters directly connecting to their QuickFee billing platform, tying the execution of the letter directly to the billing process.
“We’ve long sought to partner with a firm focused on strategic innovation in the accounting space,” said Jamie Peebles, founder of Knuula. “To develop a perfect solution for large firms, it is ideal to have a partner that is willing to work closely together and iterate quickly. This requires constant feedback between our two teams. The IT team from BMSS worked with our development team constantly and helped us iterate rapidly. We also had consistent input from partners, manager, and administrative staff to help us make valuable changes to Knuula. BMSS was a perfect partner for us.”
PwC AI agent acts proactively to preserve value
Eide Bailly merges in Traner Smith
BMSS announces investment, collaboration with Knuula
New 2023 K-1 instructions stir the CAMT pot for partnerships and corporations
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