The News
The sudden success of Chinese artificial intelligence startup DeepSeek triggered a global stock selloff Monday, wiping roughly $1 trillion from the US stockmarket.
Chipmaker Nvidia — seen as a bellwether for AI stocks — suffered the largest single-day decline in market capitalization of any company in history, losing $589 billion, or almost 17% of its value.
Meta and Alphabet, which have invested heavily in AI, were also down sharply, as were energy and data center companies such as Oracle and Vertiv. AI and tech dragged down the rest of the stock market, CNN wrote. The tech-heavy Nasdaq plunged 3.1% and the S&P 500 fell 1.5%.
DeepSeek’s chatbot runs on less advanced chips than the most capable AI models from American firms like Meta and OpenAI, but performs similarly. Last week, Meta said it would spend upward of $65 billion this year on AI development. However, DeepSeek’s launch has shaken the belief “that only a few firms with huge budgets can compete” in AI, Bloomberg wrote.
DeepSeek’s achievement also comes despite US efforts to limit China’s access to AI chips, and amid attempts to shore up the US industry: US President Donald Trump last week signed an executive order aimed at ensuring US dominance in the fast-evolving technology.