Entrepreneur Marc Andreessen, known for co-writing Mosaic, one of the world’s first web browsers, wrote Sunday on X that “DeepSeek R1 is AI’s Sputnik moment,” likening it to the space race between the U.S. and the Soviet Union and the event that forced the U.S. to realize that its technological abilities were not unassailable.

US tech stocks were steady on Tuesday after they slumped on Monday following the sudden rise of Chinese-made artificial intelligence (AI) app DeepSeek. Shares in chip giant Nvidia rose by 8.8%, having slumped on Monday, as experts said the AI selloff may have been an over-reaction.

By some measures, Boston’s startup ecosystem has been left far behind Silicon Valley in the race to develop artificial intelligence. But the shocking emergence of Chinese AI chatbot DeepSeek could actually help Boston catch up.