On the 27th, local time, big tech stocks on the New York Stock Exchange started sharply lower following the news that DeepSeek, a Chinese artificial intelligence (AI) startup, launched a competitively priced chatbot service comparable to America's ChatGPT.
On this day, the technology-focused Nasdaq index on the New York Stock Exchange traded at 19,345.04, down 609.26 points (-3.05%) from the previous trading day as of 9:33 a.m. (Eastern Time). The Standard and Poor's (S&P) 500 index fell 106.00 points (-1.74%) to 5,995.24, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 151.32 points (-0.34%) to 44,272.93.
The news that DeepSeek launched a generative AI service comparable to ChatGPT's performance without using the latest chips raised concerns about whether the leading position of American big tech in the AI sector might be shaken. The AI model, DeepSeek-R1, developed by DeepSeek, reportedly outperformed the inference AI model 'o1' released by OpenAI in September of last year in some performance tests.
DeepSeek, a startup based in Hangzhou, China, shocked both industry insiders and outsiders by creating an AI model with performance comparable to big tech at a low cost using publicly available open sources, even amid U.S. semiconductor export restrictions.
Over the past two years, leading AI-related stocks that have driven the U.S. stock market's bull run have taken a direct hit. Semiconductor giant Nvidia plummeted by 12% at the open, while Meta (-2.5%), Alphabet (-3.6%), and Microsoft (-4.5%) also saw significant declines.
Karoo Chanana, chief investment strategist at Saxo Bank, noted, "Even if DeepSeek fails to maintain its current popularity, this development serves as a reminder that Nvidia may not maintain its leading position forever."