A small lab in China has shaken Silicon Valley. The sudden appearance of an advanced AI assistant from DeepSeek, a previously little-known company in the Chinese city of Hangzhou, has sparked discussion and debate within the U.

The company built a cheaper, competitive chatbot with fewer high-end computer chips than U.S. behemoths like Google and OpenAI, showing the limits of chip export control.

Fears that the AI gold rush could be under threat rocked Wall Street on Monday following the emergence of a ChatGPT-like model from China, triggering predictions of turmoil for Silicon Valley and accusations of cheating.