Entrepreneur Marc Andreessen, known for co-writing Mosaic, one of the world’s first web browsers, wrote Sunday on X that “DeepSeek R1 is AI’s Sputnik moment,” likening it to the space race between the U.S. and the Soviet Union and the event that forced the U.S. to realize that its technological abilities were not unassailable.

Chinese startup DeepSeek’s app has climbed to the top of the iPhone charts as its newest AI assistant showed competitive performance against rivals like OpenAI and Meta.

The tech-heavy Nasdaq composite closed down nearly 3% on Monday, with shares of AI-focused chipmaker Nvidia plunging 17% and shaving nearly $590 billion from the company’s market cap.

Technology stocks regained ground on Tuesday, a day after a low-cost Chinese AI model rattled markets, while traders rotated back into the dollar from safe-haven currencies. The tech rebound boosted Wall Street's main stock indices,

Technology stocks plunged Monday after China’s DeepSeek announced it had trained a sophisticated AI model at a fraction of the cost of Silicon Valley firms, sparking a sharp reversal in the AI rally.