What Is DeepSeek? What to Know About the Chinese AI Startup That Spurred a

U.S. AI stocks sold off Monday, after an app from Chinese AI startup DeepSeek dethroned OpenAI’s as the most-downloaded free app in the U.S. on Apple.
DeepSeek claims its latest model’s performance is on par with that of American AI leaders like OpenAI, and was reportedly developed at a fraction of the cost.
However, several analysts raised doubts about the market’s reaction Monday, suggesting reasons it could offer investors a chance to pick up beaten-down AI names.

Shares of AI chipmaker Nvidia (NVDA) and a slew of other stocks related to AI sold off Monday after an app from Chinese AI startup DeepSeek boomed in popularity.

DeepSeek’s AI assistant recently topped the list of free iPhone apps on Apple’s (AAPL) app store. (It wasn’t in the top 10 on Alphabet’s (GOOGL) Google Play store, though it is listed there.) In Apple’s store, the app ranked higher than ChatGPT; not so on Google.

Here’s what you need to know about DeepSeek—and why it’s having a big impact on markets. And if you’re wondering if it wasn’t that long ago that another Chinese app was topping the download charts, you’re not wrong.

DeepSeek, a Chinese startup founded by hedge fund manager Liang Wenfeng, was founded in 2023 in Hangzhou, China, the tech hub home to Alibaba (BABA) and many of China’s other high-flying tech giants.

The company says its latest AI model released earlier this month offers performance that is on par with that of OpenAI’s ChatGPT. It was also reportedly developed in just two months for under $6 million, at a time when the U.S. is limiting China’s access to its most sophisticated chips and American AI leaders like OpenAI, Anthropic, and Meta Platforms (META) are spending billions of dollars on development.

The rapid ascension of DeepSeek has investors worried it could threaten assumptions about how much competitive AI models cost to develop, as well as the kind of infrastructure needed to support them, with wide-reaching implications for the AI marketplace and Big Tech shares.

The tech-heavy Nasdaq was down more than 3% in afternoon trading Monday as investors dragged a host of stocks with ties to AI, from chip to energy firms, downwards.

Shares of American AI chipmakers including Nvidia, Broadcom (AVGO) and AMD (AMD) sold off, along with those of international partners like TSMC (TSM). The the PHLX Semiconductor Index (SOX) was recently down nearly 9%. Networking solutions and hardware partner stocks dropped along with them, including Dell (Dell), Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) and Arista Networks (ANET).

Some energy stocks were hit too. Shares of nuclear and other energy companies that saw their stocks boom in the last year in anticipation of an AI-driven boom in energy demand, such as Vistra (VST), Constellation Energy (CEG), Oklo (OKLO), and NuScale (SMR), also lost ground Monday.

Meanwhile, non-tech sectors like consumer staples rose Monday, marking a reconsideration of the market’s momentum in recent months.

Several analysts raised doubts about the longevity of the market’s reaction Monday, suggesting that the day’s pullback could offer investors a chance to pick up AI names set for a rebound.

Bernstein’s Stacy Rasgon called the reaction “overblown” and maintained a “buy” rating for Nvidia’s stock price. Citi analysts, who said they expect AI companies to continue buying its advanced chips, also maintained a buy rating on Nvidia.

Wedbush analysts, who voiced skepticism that any major U.S. companies would use a Chinese startup like DeepSeek to build their AI infrastructure, said “launching a competitive LLM model for consumer use cases is one thing… launching broader AI infrastructure is a whole other ballgame and nothing with DeepSeek makes us believe anything different.”

Wedbush called Monday a “golden buying opportunity” to own shares in ChatGPT backer Microsoft (MSFT), Alphabet, Palantir (PLTR), Amazon (AMZN) and other heavyweights of the American AI ecosystem that had come under pressure.

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