Stocks Open Sharply Lower. DeepSeek Sends Tech Stocks Plummeting.
A Chinese artificial intelligence start-up sent the stock market into a tailspin on Monday.
The Nasdaq Composite sank 3.6% shortly after the market opened. The S&P 500 dropped 2.1%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 243 points, or 0.5%.
Driving the steep decline was DeepSeek, a Chinese AI program that climbed to the top spot on Apple’s App Store. The firm’s free assistant came out on Jan. 20 and competes shockingly well with OpenAI’s ChatGPT and other popular programs. It also uses less expensive chips and less data than rivals.