U.S. technology companies experienced a sharp decline in premarket trading after a global sell-off was triggered by Chinese startup DeepSeek, which raised fears about AI competition and America’s leadership in the field.
Before the market opened at 05:11 a.m. ET, shares of chip designer Nvidia, which has benefited greatly from the AI craze, were down 9.84%.
ASM International and ASML, two semiconductor businesses based in the Netherlands, fell 14.94% and 10.59%, respectively, in European trade, while Japanese chip-related stocks saw a general decline in Asia.
Late in December, DeepSeek released a large-language model that is free and open-source.
The company said that the model was created in two months for less than $6 million, which is significantly less than what their Western peers had demanded.
Source (CNBC)
