A tech-stock selloff sent the broader market lower. Worries about new AI competition might finally spark a market correction.

A frenzy over an artificial intelligence chatbot made by Chinese tech startup DeepSeek was upending stock markets Monday and fueling debates over the economic and geopolitical competition between the U.

U.S. tech stocks plunged on Monday, amid a wider market sell-off. The culprit: DeepSeek, a Chinese artificial intelligence company that last week introduced a new — and low-cost — model into the red-hot AI tech market.

A welcome message on the DeepSeek artificial intelligence app. Photo credit: Getty Just a few days ago no one had ever heard of DeepSeek. Now the Chinese lab and its new artificial intelligence model are the only things anyone seems to care about.