The Chinese AI firm’s new model is rattling the tech industry and the stock market. Here’s some of the smart commentary on why.

DeepSeek, a Chinese artificial-intelligence startup that’s just over a year old, has stirred awe and consternation in Silicon Valley after demonstrating AI models that offer comparable performance to the world’s best chatbots at seemingly a fraction of their development cost.

The app's sudden popularity, as well as DeepSeek's reportedly low costs compared to those of US-based AI companies, have thrown financial markets into a spin. Silicon Valley venture capitalist Marc Andreessen has hailed DeepSeek as "one of the most amazing and impressive breakthroughs" in AI.

By some measures, Boston’s startup ecosystem has been left far behind Silicon Valley in the race to develop artificial intelligence. But the shocking emergence of Chinese AI chatbot DeepSeek could actually help Boston catch up.

The app has overtaken ChatGPT to become the top free application on Apple's App Store in the UK.