Friday Briefing: The AI bubble might be about to pop

Nvidia took the biggest hit

The world of US technology and artificial intelligence was rocked last week, after the super rapid rise of Chinese startup DeepSeek since its launch on 20 January.

Last Monday (27 January), DeepSeek's R1 had taken over ChatGP as the most downloaded AI tool, sending US tech stocks spiralling. On the day, the Nasdaq Composite dropped around 3.6%, followed by a 1.9% fall in the S&P 500. AI chip producer Nvidia took the biggest hit, with $600bn shaved off its market cap by the end of Monday, a 17% drop in its share price, the biggest one-day fall in the history of Wall Street. The main issue at hand was that DeepSeek was able to do exactly what Sam Altman's OpenAI has been doing for the last two years, with far lower research and development cost...