Chinese startup DeepSeek has debuted an AI app that challenges OpenAI's ChatGPT and other U.S. rivals, sending a shock through Wall Street.

In a matter of days, DeepSeek proved to be so popular as to climb to the top of Apple's App Store, surpassing OpenAI's ChatGPT as the most downloaded app. But for owners of Nvidia stock, and stock traders in general, DeepSeek is on track of becoming a black swan — an unexpected event with extreme consequences.

According to a paper authored by the lab, the DeepSeek-R1 model outperforms cutting-edge models such as OpenAI’s o1 and Meta’s Llama AI models across multiple benchmarks.

The Chinese AI service has Wall Street worried that it will be cheaper than expected to develop models. But as chip stocks sink, some analysts see a silver lining.

DeepSeek released an open-source artificial intelligence model in December after saying that it took only two months and less than $6 million to create.

Barrett Woodside, co-founder of the San Francisco AI hardware company Positron, said he and his colleagues have been abuzz about DeepSeek.

Nvidia, Broadcom, and Taiwan Semiconductor were among the market's top losers on Monday as the rise of DeepSeek rattled investors.

KEY TAKEAWAYS A slew of artificial intelligence stocks, including chip maker Nvidia, are tumbling in premarket trading Monday after Chinese startup DeepSeek released a cutting-edge AI model that runs on less-advanced chips and at a lower cost than U.

DeepSeek topped the Apple App Store chart and sparked fears the Chinese company was quickly catching up with OpenAI's ChatGPT while costing far less.