With around six million dollars and a stockpile of chips acquired before Washington banned their export to China, startup DeepSeek has produced what Chinese tech titans couldn't -- a world-class AI chatbot.
The stock market plummeted this week after a Chinese company showed it could do more with less.
Investors have poured billions of dollars into the research and development of artificial intelligence (AI) over the past year, hoping to capitalise on this rapidly advancing technology.
In demonstrating its ability to innovate around American export restrictions, DeepSeek has raised doubts as to whether access to piles of cutting-edge semiconductors and related equipment is as important as previously thought when it comes to training AI models.