Chinese tech industry floods market with AI models after DeepSeek success

DeepSeek did more than just show the AI industry you don’t have to spend billions to build artificial intelligence. It fired up a long-dormant Chinese tech industry — and now Western names from OpenAI Inc. to Nvidia Corp. may pay the price.

Since DeepSeek upstaged OpenAI in January with a powerful model that purportedly cost just several million dollars to build, China’s tech leaders have flooded the market with a rapid succession of low-cost AI services,