Tech stocks tank as Chinese competitor threatens to upend AI frenzy; Nvidia sinks nearly 17 pc

Wall Street’s superstars are tumbling as a competitor from China threatens to upend the artificial-intelligence frenzy they’ve been feasting on.

The S&P 500 fell 1.5 per cent Monday. Big Tech stocks took some of the heaviest losses, with Nvidia down nearly 17 per cent, and they dragged the Nasdaq composite down 3.1 per cent.

Besides chip companies, utilities hoping to electrify power-hungry AI data centres also tumbled. Stocks outside of AI-related industries held up much better, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 0.7 per cent. A Chinese company called DeepSeek said it had developed a large language model that can compete with US giants at perhaps a fraction of the cost.