Trump warns of “awakening” to US technology companies

US President Donald Trump has called the rise of Chinese company Deepseek “Awakening to Wake up” for the US technology industry after the advent of its artificial intelligence (AI) model caused the Wall Street shock waves.

Shares in major technology companies like NVIDIA fell sharply, with the chip giant losing almost $ 600 billion (£ 482 billion) in market value.

What shakes the industry is Deepseek's claim that its R1 model is made with part of the price of its rivals – raising questions about the future of AI dominance in America and the scale of investment that US companies are planning.

Deepseek has become the most stressed free application in the United States just a week after its launch.

In response to the news, Trump said that the largest developments in the Chinese AI industry may be “positive” to the United States.

“If you can do it more cheaper, if you can do it (for) less (s), get to the same end result. I think it's nice for us,” he told reporters aboard Air Force One.

He also said he was not concerned about a breakthrough, adding that the US would remain a dominant player in the field.

Deepseek is powered by the open source Deepseek -V3, which its researchers are trained for about $ 6 million (4.2 million pounds) -significantly less than the billions spent by rivals. But this statement is contested by others in AI.

Its appearance is coming as the United States limits the sale of modern chip technology that feeds AI to China.

In order to continue their work without stable supplies of imported advanced chips, Chinese EI developers shared their work with each other and experimented with new approaches to the technology.

This led to AI models that require far less computing power than before.

It also means that they cost much less than it is considered possible, which has the potential to increase the industry.

On Tuesday, shares at Japanese AI companies, including Advantst, Softbank and Tokyo Electron, fell sharply, helping to push the Nikkei 225 indicator with about 1%.

Several other markets in Asia are closed to the moon's New Year.

The financial markets of continental China will be closed as of Tuesday and will reopen on February 5th.

Stock exchanges in Taiwan and South Korea, which both have large chip companies, are also closed.

After the Depepeek-R1 launched earlier this month, the company boasts a “presentation with” one of the latest Openai models when used for tasks such as mathematics, encoding and natural language reasoning.

Deepseek technology is praised by high -profile figures, including OpenAi Chief Sam Altman, who called it an “impressive model, especially around what they can deliver for the price”, although he added that Openai “would obviously deliver much more – Good models “moving forward.

“Deepseek's ability to compete with American models, despite the limits of access to advanced hardware, shows that software ingenuity and data efficiency can compensate for hardware restrictions,” says Marina Gian, Associate Professor Sydney, who focuses on high -tech industries in China.

Ion Stoica, co-founder and executive chairman of AI Software Company Databricks, told the BBC that the lower price of Deepseek may encourage more companies to accept AI in their business.

“If that happens, this cost reduction can accelerate the progress of AI,” he said. “In general, the market will expand faster and the value of the market will increase faster.”

The Chinese company claims that its model can be trained at 2000 specialized chips compared to approximately 16,000 for leading models.

But not everyone is convinced. Some of them doubt some of Deepseek's claims, including Tech Mogul Elon Musk.

He responded to a publication that claims that Deepseek actually has about 50,000 NVIDIA chips, which are now banned from export to China, saying, “Obviously.”

The company was founded in 2023 by Liang Venfen in Hangzhou, a city in southeastern China.

The 40-year-old, a graduate of information and e-engineering, also founded the Hedge Fund, which supported Deepseek.

He was recently seen at a meeting between industry experts and Chinese Prime Minister Li Kiang.

In an interview with July 2024 with The Chinese AcademyG -n Liang said he was surprised by the reaction of the previous version of his AI model.

“We didn't expect prices to be such a sensitive problem,” he said.

“We just follow our own pace, calculated the costs and accordingly set prices.”