The messaging was rolled out on platforms such as X and META.O Facebook and Instagram, as well as Chinese services Toutiao and Weibo, Graphika said.

Entrepreneur Marc Andreessen, known for co-writing Mosaic, one of the world’s first web browsers, wrote Sunday on X that “DeepSeek R1 is AI’s Sputnik moment,” likening it to the space race between the U.S. and the Soviet Union and the event that forced the U.S. to realize that its technological abilities were not unassailable.

Silicon Valley and Washington leaders said the app shows China can challenge the U.S. The Nasdaq lost 3 percent and chipmaker Nvidia shed $589 billion in market capitalization.

The tech-heavy Nasdaq composite closed down nearly 3% on Monday, with shares of AI-focused chipmaker Nvidia plunging 17% and shaving nearly $590 billion from the company’s market cap.

A major disruption hit the artificial intelligence sector this week as DeepSeek, a China-based chatbot, unveiled its latest AI models—trained for just $6 million. That’s a fraction of the cost U.S. companies typically spend,