A small Chinese startup just forced America's biggest tech companies to rethink how they build artificial intelligence.

DeepSeek's release of its R1 model, which reportedly matches or exceeds the capabilities of U.S.-built AI systems at a fraction of the cost, triggered a massive sell-off in tech stocks that erased nearly $600 billion from Nvidia's market value alone.

The shockwaves hit the US tech sector in the gut, with leaders in the industry hurrying to analyze how DeepSeek achieved such results.