A Chinese artificial intelligence company called DeepSeek is grabbing America’s attention — and sending a shock wave through Wall Street — due to its new tech, which some experts say rivals that of OpenAI’s ChatGPT.
DeepSeek is also catching investors off guard because of the low development costs for its AI app, which Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives pegged at only $6 million. By comparison, OpenAI, Google and other major U.S. companies are on track to invest a total of roughly $1 trillion in AI over the coming years, according to Goldman Sachs.
On Monday, DeepSeek’s rollout roiled shares of AI stalwarts such as Nvidia, the high-flying manufacturer of advanced chips engineered for AI development, and Dutch company ASML, another chipmaker. The Chinese company’s tech is raising questions about whether demand for Nvidia’s chips could take a hit, as well as whether investors are overvaluing tech stocks that have been buoyed by the promise of AI, from Meta to Microsoft, experts said.
“DeepSeek has taken the market by storm by doing more with less,” said Giuseppe Sette, president at AI market research firm Reflexivity, in an email. “This shows that with AI the surprises will keep on coming in the next few years.”
DeepSeek’s latest app comes just days after Mr. Trump announced a new $500 billion venture with ChatGPT maker OpenAI, Softbank and Oracle, dubbed Stargate, which he touted as ensuring “the future of technology” in the U.S.
Nvidia shares tumbled 12.5% in early trading on Monday, while ASML shed 7.6%. The tech-heavy Nasdaq index slumped 3.4% in early trading, while the S&P 500 declined 1.8%.
What is DeepSeek?
DeepSeek is a private Chinese company founded in July 2023 by Liang Wenfeng, a graduate of Zhejiang University, one of China’s top universities, who funded the startup via his hedge fund, according to the MIT Technology Review. Liang has about $8 billion in assets, Ives wrote in a Jan. 27 research note.
Liang, who had previously focused on applying AI to investing, had bought a “stockpile of Nvidia A100 chips,” a type of tech that is now banned from export to China. Those chips became the basis of DeepSeek, the MIT publication reported.
Is DeepSeek available in the U.S.?
The company’s AI app is available in Apple’s App store, as well as online at its website. The service is free and as of Monday morning was the top download on Apple’s store, although some people were having trouble signing up for the app.
The company released its latest AI model on Jan. 20, which is causing Wall Street to reappraise the AI sector.
“Last week DeepSeek launched a model that rivals OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Meta’s Llama 3.1 and was #1 on Apple’s App Store over the weekend,” Wedbush’s Ives wrote. “DeepSeek built the model using reduced capability chips from Nvidia. which is impressive and thus has caused major agita for U.S. tech stocks with massive pressure on Nasdaq this morning.”
How is DeepSeek than other AI apps?
DeepSeek is an open-source large language model that relies on what is known as “inference-time computing,” which Sette said in layman’s terms means “they activate only the most relevant portions of their model for each query, and that saves money and computation power.”
Some experts praised DeepSeek’s performance, with noted tech investor Marc Andreessen writing on X on Jan. 24, “DeepSeek R1 is one of the most amazing and impressive breakthroughs I’ve ever seen — and as open source, a profound gift to the world.”
However, Ives said he’s skeptical the service will gain ground with major U.S. businesses.
“No U.S. Global 2000 is going to use a Chinese startup DeepSeek to launch their AI infrastructure and use cases,” Ives wrote. “At the end of the day there is only one chip company in the world launching autonomous, robotics, and broader AI use cases and that is Nvidia.”
