Almost instantly, DeepSeek-R1 soared to the top of Apple’s rankings, becoming the most downloaded free app in the United States.
The company claimed at the time that its newly launched chatbot matched the capabilities of ChatGPT. Moreover, it emphasized that the development costs had been only a small portion of what similar projects required.
These declarations—combined with the app’s rapid explosion in popularity—erased $600bn (£446bn), or 17%, from the market capitalization of chip-making giant Nvidia, marking the greatest single-day loss for any individual stock in US market history. Other technology shares tied to AI also suffered significant declines in the aftermath.
DeepSeek’s breakthrough further raised questions over America’s supremacy in AI. Until then, China had largely been viewed as lagging behind the US.
Suddenly, it appeared China had vaulted into a leading position.
Venture capitalist Marc Andreessen described DeepSeek-R1’s emergence as “AI’s Sputnik moment,” invoking the Soviet satellite launch that ignited the Cold War space race between the US and the USSR more than fifty years ago.
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