Trump calls DeepSeek's strong showing a ‘wake-up call' for US tech

South China Morning Post

27-01-2025

Khushboo Razdan in Washington Published: 8:15am, 28 Jan 2025
'Today and over the last couple of days, I've been reading about China and some of the companies in China, one in particular, coming up with a faster method of AI and much less expensive method. And that's good, because you don't have to spend as much money. I view that as a positive, as an asset', Trump told Republican lawmakers gathered at his Doral golf resort in Miami, Florida.
He added: 'The release of DeepSeek AI from a Chinese company, should be a wake up call for our industries, that we need to be laser focused on competing to win, because we have the greatest scientists in the world'.
Trump also pledged during his remarks that under his administration 'we're going to unleash our tech companies, and we're going to dominate the future like never before', telling American tech firms that 'you'll be doing that too, so you won't be spending as much, and you'll get the same result'. DeepSeek's AI reasoning model R1 was published fully open-source last week. The announcement sparked a sell-off in US tech stocks on Monday, with investors fearing that the new AI model could threaten the dominance of current leaders in the space.
The market jitters were particularly severe for US semiconductor giant Nvidia, which saw a staggering US$592.7 billion drop in market value amid growing concerns over China's rapidly advancing AI technology.