Fears of upheaval in the AI gold rush rocked Wall Street on Monday following the emergence of a popular ChatGPT-like model from China, with US President Donald Trump saying it was a "wake-up call" for Silicon Valley.

Last week's release of the latest DeepSeek model initially received limited attention, overshadowed by the inauguration of Trump on the same day.

However, over the weekend, the Chinese artificial intelligence startup's chatbot surged to become the most downloaded free app on Apple's US App Store, displacing OpenAI's ChatGPT.

What truly rattled the industry was DeepSeek's claim that it developed its latest model, the R1, at a fraction of the cost that major companies are investing in AI development, primarily on expensive Nvidia chips and software.

The development is significant given the AI boom, ignited by ChatGPT's release in late 2022, has propelled Nvidia to become one of the world's most valuable companies.

The news sent shockwaves through the US tech sector, exposing a critical concern: should tech giants continue to pour hundreds of billions of dollars into AI investment when a Chinese company can apparently produce a comparable model so........

© International Business Times