Nvidia was falling early Friday as politicians and Big Tech firms comment on the effects of Chinese firm DeepSeek’s apparently low-cost AI.

Good morning. US officials question whether DeepSeek dodged chip restrictions. Mexico and Canada brace for Donald Trump’s much-hyped tariffs. And you may want to stock up on avocados. Listen to the day’s top stories.

While the demand is there, it's clear that's not the sole reason why Nvidia's RTX 50 series is impossible to find in stores. Many retailers received fairly low stock quantities, as Nvidia reportedly experienced manufacturing issues.

According to a paper authored by the lab, the DeepSeek-R1 model outperforms cutting-edge models such as OpenAI’s o1 and Meta’s Llama AI models across multiple benchmarks.

Technology stocks were rocked to their core Monday after claims made by a Chinese start-up threatened to upend the existing artificial intelligence (AI) paradigm.

DeepSeek stunned the tech world with the release of its R1 "reasoning" model, matching or exceeding OpenAI's reasoning model for a fraction of the cost.

Global investors are worried the emergence of a low-cost Chinese AI model will threaten the dominance of AI leaders.

Despite the negative financial impact, Nvidia praised DeepSeek’s breakthrough. “DeepSeek is an excellent A.I. advancement and a perfect example of test time scaling,” a company spokesperson told Observer in a statement.

A Chinese startup’s latest affordable artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot sent NVIDIA Corporation’s NVDA shares into a tailspin, erasing half a trillion in market capitalization. However, the widespread anxiety among NVIDIA investors is overblown.

This story incorporates reporting from The Motley Fool, scmp.com and MSN.The rise of Chinese AI startup DeepSeek has caused ripples across the technology sector by exposing potential weaknesses in Nvidia’s market dominance.