In the rapidly evolving artificial intelligence landscape, a new powerhouse seemingly emerged overnight — DeepSeek, a cutting-edge AI model developed in Hangzhou, China.

DeepSeek’s arrival on the Google and Apple app stores on U.S. devices ignited intense debate last week among tech leaders, national security experts, and policymakers, with some describing it as a “Sputnik moment” for AI. After DeepSeek became one of the most downloaded apps Monday morning, the tech market saw a stark drop in value, marked by shares for Nvidia, the graphics chips manufacturer serving as the backbone for OpenAI’s ChatGPT services, losing more than 12% of their value.