DeepSeek’s latest models, created by a small company with limited resources, are already beating many of the leading AI models in the United States.

DeepSeek is called “amazing and impressive” despite working with less-advanced chips.

Investors dumped technology stocks in premarket trading Monday, sending U.S. indexes sharply lower after Chinese artificial intelligence startup DeepSeek demonstrated a chatbot that it says rivals the top versions from OpenAI and Google for a fraction of the cost.

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

U.S. stock futures and Asian shares outside China slumped on Monday as investors weighed the implications of Chinese startup DeepSeek's launch of a free, open-source artificial intelligence model to rival OpenAI's ChatGPT.

China's most important festival, this year public holidays will begin Tuesday and continue until Feb. 4. Millions of Chinese leave the cities to travel back home for a rare break

China's manufacturing activity unexpectedly contracted in January, an official factory survey showed on Monday, its weakest since August, keeping alive calls for stimulus in the world's second-largest economy.