Investors dumped technology stocks in premarket trading Monday, sending U.S. indexes sharply lower after Chinese artificial intelligence startup DeepSeek demonstrated a chatbot that it says rivals the top versions from OpenAI and Google for a fraction of the cost.

DeepSeek topped the Apple AppStore chart and sparked fears the Chinese company is quickly catching up with OpenAI's ChatGPT while costing far less.

Mitesh Agrawal is leaving Lambda Labs to head a little known AI hardware startup trying to take on Nvidia.

DeepSeek was reportedly developed in just two months at a cost of under $6 million — a stark contrast to the billions typically spent by US giants.

Barrett Woodside, co-founder of the San Francisco AI hardware company Positron, said he and his colleagues have been abuzz about DeepSeek.

Since the start of 2023, Nvidia's (NASDAQ: NVDA) stock has gained an astronomical 906% as of the time of writing. While this is common investor thinking, it's caused many (including myself) to miss a large chunk of Nvidia's rise.

Nvidia's new focus on physical AI and robotics has crucial implications for industrial automation systems. With this shift, we’re seeing the rise of robotic enterprises.

It feels like this day was always going to come — when all the artificial-intelligence names collapse — but one might have imagined it would come from, say, a profit warning from Nvidia. Instead, it comes from what appears to be an Nvidia consumer, Chinese AI service provider DeepSeek.

The news is the latest sign of skyrocketing valuations for privately held AI start-ups, which show growing investor enthusiasm for AI and confidence that companies like Anthropic will justify that valuation over the long term, eventually generating billions in profits.

Massive artificial intelligence spending supercharged its growth, but with Nvidia due to report earnings on Feb. 26, Wall Street suggests the semiconductor stock may soon hit a ceiling. Analysts have assigned a consensus one-year price target on NVDA stock of $164 per share. That implies only a 15% gain over the next 12 months.

DeepSeek, like other Chinese AI models, exhibits self-censorship on sensitive topics in China. It avoids addressing queries about events such as the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests or a potential Chinese invasion of Taiwan. The bot also refuses to comment on Chinese President Xi Jinping.