Wall Street indexes sank 3 percent in early trading on Monday after a Chinese artificial intelligence startup triggered fears America’s top tech stocks are overvalued.
Investors dumped around $1 trillion of technology stocks in premarket trading sending the S&P 500 2.3 percent lower before the bell.
The tech-heavy Nasdaq has been hit harder, tumbling more than 3 percent as markets opened at 9:30am.
Chinese artificial intelligence startup DeepSeek demonstrated a chatbot that it says rivals the top versions from OpenAI and Google for a fraction of the cost.
Chipmaker Nvidia, which has benefitted from the AI frenzy over the last eighteen months, fell around 11 percent as markets opened wiping out $465 billion in market value.
Another US chipmaker Broadcom also lost around 12 percent while software giant Oracle lost 8 percent in early trading.
Microsoft slid more than 6 percent and Amazon was down 4.5 percent.
Google parent company Alphabet and Facebook parent Meta each lost about 3.5 percent.
The Nasdaq tumbled almost 4 percent in premarket trading on Monday
US tech stocks took a hit before markets open on Monday morning
DeepSeek’s advances have raised doubts about whether the US will retain its lead in the global race of advancing AI technology.
The Chinese company released its free AI Assistant last week which it says uses less Nvidia chips at a fraction of the cost of current models on the market.
DeepSeek overtook its rival ChatGPT to become the most-downloaded free application available on the Apple Store in the US on Monday.
The fallout has also weighed down global indexes, with the Stoxx Europe 600 down 0.4 percent in early European trading.
Germany’s DAX dropped 1.1 percent, while the CAC 40 in Paris shed 0.8 percent and Britain’s FTSE 100 declined 0.3 percent.
Netherland’s chip companies ASML and ASM were also hit badly off the back of DeepSeek’s advances, falling 8 percent and 12 percent respectively.
Japanese chip-related stocks including Advantest and Tokyo Electron were also lower.
