SHAKING UP SILICON VALLEY: THE RISE OF DEEPSEEK CHALLENGES THE DOMINANCE OF U.S. FIRMS AND THE PROPRIETARY MODEL IN THE AI SPACE.

WHEN DEEPSEEK, the Chinese generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) model, debuted in late January, few could have predicted the impact it would have on the global AI landscape.

- ARNAV DAS SHARMA

Developed at a fraction of the cost of its U.S. counterparts, DeepSeek-R1 has not only surpassed OpenAI’s ChatGPT in downloads but also sent Wall Street into a tailspin. On January 27, the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite plummeted by 3.1%, the S&P 500 slid 1.8%, and tech giant Nvidia, the dominant force in AI hardware, took a major hit. By January 29, the Nvidia stock had shed a whopping $130 billion in market value.