But when a little Chinese AI company called DeepSeek takes a trillion-dollar chunk out of the U.S. stock market—in what can best be described as a nerd drive-by? Well—that story goes above the fold, to use a term my journalist friends love.

Chinese AI startup DeepSeek disrupts U.S. tech markets with cost-efficient, open-source models, sparking national security concerns and testing trade restrictions.

Chinese startup DeepSeek has achieved what many (including experts) thought impossible: create a foundational, competitive AI model for just $5.6 million. By comparison, OpenAI’s unreleased GPT-5 (codenamed “Orion”) reportedly requires $500 million for six months of training.