The little-known artificial intelligence firm has emphasized research, even as it emerged as the brainchild of a hedge fund.

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.

A frenzy over an artificial intelligence chatbot made by Chinese tech startup DeepSeek was upending stock markets Monday and fueling debates over the economic and geopolitical competition between the U.

DeepSeek, a new Chinese AI chatbot startup is receiving new attention from Silicon Valley after a surprising launch. It drove U.S. tech shares lower on Monday.

The tech-heavy Nasdaq index lost nearly 4 percent in early trading Monday, with chipmaker Nvidia down nearly 12 percent.