Some AI researchers hailed DeepSeek’s R1 as a breakthrough on the same level as DeepMind’s AlphaZero, a 2017 model that became superhuman at the board games Chess and Go by purely playing against itself and improving, rather than observing any human games.

U.S. tech shares tumbled on Monday after the popularity of Chinese AI startup DeepSeek raised concerns among investors over American dominance in the sector.The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite plunged 3.5% in afternoon trading.

The Chinese artificial intelligence firm DeepSeek has rattled markets with claims its latest AI model performs on a par with those of OpenAI, despite using less advanced, more energy efficient compute