When it comes to artificial intelligence (AI), few companies have rattled Wall Street this year quite like DeepSeek. Dubbed China’s “dark horse,” the AI startup burst onto the scene in January with a breakthrough model that briefly shook up the global tech landscape, triggering a selloff in Nvidia (NVDA) and other AI-related stocks. At the time, however, fears quickly faded when investors realized the startup still depended heavily on Nvidia’s hardware to train and scale its models.
Now, the narrative may be shifting in a more concerning direction. DeepSeek recently hinted that its newest models will be "tailored" for domestically produced Chinese chips, not Nvidia’s. The company even said its precision format for the latest V3.1 model was designed with “next-generation” homegrown semiconductors in mind.
