Laila Kirkpatrick, Staff Writer
China’s advancements in AI are increasingly worrying members of Silicon Valley and Wall Street. On Monday, U.S. stocks plunged amid a widespread market sell-off, with many pointing to Chinese AI company DeepSeek as the cause. Last week, DeepSeek introduced a new, low-cost AI model into the tech market.
As of Monday, DeepSeek has become the most downloaded free app in the U.S. Apple App Store, surpassing OpenAI’s ChatGPT. This development has also impacted Nvidia, whose shares dropped by 13% on Monday. Nvidia, a company known for developing chips used in many of the world’s most valuable technologies, saw its rival companies, including Arm and Broadcom, also face significant declines.
These stock drops have dragged down major indexes, with the Nasdaq falling nearly 600 points (3%) by late morning. While major tech companies such as Google, Microsoft, Apple, and Meta have invested billions in AI development, investors are now questioning the pricing strategies of big tech firms. Meanwhile, DeepSeek claims that it can train its models at a lower cost and has developed an open-source AI assistant that relies on less advanced chips than those used by competitors.
