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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Business
Dan Milmo, Amy Hawkins, Robert Booth and Julia Kollewe

‘Sputnik moment’: $1tn wiped off US stocks after Chinese firm unveils AI chatbot

DeepSeek app on a mobile phone
The DeepSeek AI assistant topped the Apple app store in the US and UK over the weekend. Photograph: Greg Baker/AFP/Getty Images

The race for domination in artificial intelligence was blown wide open on Monday after the launch of a Chinese chatbot wiped $1tn from the leading US tech index, with one investor calling it a “Sputnik moment” for the world’s AI superpowers.

Investors punished global tech stocks on Monday after the emergence of DeepSeek, a competitor to OpenAI and its ChatGPT tool, shook faith in the US artificial intelligence boom by appearing to deliver the same performance with fewer resources.

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