The developer of the chatbot that shocked U.S. incumbents had access to Nvidia chips that its parent company providentially acquired just before a 2022 U.S. export ban.

The emergence of DeepSeek came shortly after President Trump unveiled his "Stargate" project to invest $500bn in advancing AI.

Top White House advisers this week expressed alarm that China's DeepSeek may have benefited from a method that allegedly piggybacks off the advances of US rivals called "distillation."

Export controls need to be tightened after revelations the Chinese company used Nvidia technology, the leaders of a congressional committee said.

The Commerce Department has launched a probe into whether Chinese artificial intelligence startup DeepSeek obtained restricted Nvidia chips through Singapore, reports say.

DeepSeek has launched an AI model that was reportedly developed with significantly less computational power than traditional methods. Shares of Nvidia are under pressure amid concerns that DeepSeek's methods may undermine demand for its high-performance GPUs.

Leading the swing were Apple and Nvidia, both Silicon Valley giants with significant dealings in China, as shares of Apple went from as much as a 4% morning gain to a 2% daily loss by late afternoon, and Nvidia stock turned what was as much as a 3% gain to a 3% daily drop.

Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA) shares took a wild ride this week after Chinese startup DeepSeek announced it had built an AI chatbot using far less