Key Takeaways AI stocks had a volatile week as Wall Street reckoned with the implications of a sophisticated, cost-efficient AI model from Chinese start-up DeepSeek.Semiconductor stocks such as Nvidia and Broadcom sold off on Monday as investors worried DeepSeek's efficiencies would temper enthusiasm for AI infrastructure spending.

The US stock market has taken a few knocks so far in 2025. After riding high in 2024, US blue chip stock indices underperformed European indices in January, DeepSeek weighed heavily on US chip stocks last week, and now President Trump’s trade wars are also weighing on market sentiment.

Some AI researchers hailed DeepSeek’s R1 as a breakthrough on the same level as DeepMind’s AlphaZero, a 2017 model that became superhuman at the board games Chess and Go by purely playing against itself and improving, rather than observing any human games.

In this latest installment of Opening Bid, Jason Thomas of Carlyle weighed in on what the arrival of DeepSeek might imply for markets and its competitors like Nvidia.