Japanese tech firms sank Tuesday after a sell-off in US titans following news of China's DeepSeek chatbot, while the dollar rallied on a report saying Washington was considering universal tariffs on a range of goods.

Tokyo-listed companies linked to the artificial intelligence sector tanked for a second straight day as investors tracked a rout on Wall Street that saw Nvidia crumble 17 percent, wiping more than half-a-trillion dollars off its market capitalisation.

The retreat came after DeepSeek unveiled its R1 chatbot that has apparently shown the ability to match the capacity of US AI pace-setters for a fraction of the investments made by American companies.

Nvidia has been the standout company that has led the drive by investors to seek out all things AI, spending vast sums of cash but seeing their share prices rocket -- the US chip firm has piled on about 1,900 percent in five years.

The DeepSeek bombshell also came on the heels of President Donald Trump's announcement of a new $500 billion venture to build infrastructure for artificial intelligence in the United States.

Trump said the release "should be a wake-up call for our industries that we need to be........

© International Business Times