Chinese state-linked social media accounts amplified narratives celebrating the launch of Chinese startup DeepSeek's AI models last week, days before the news tanked U.S. tech stocks, according to online analysis firm Graphika.

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.

A major disruption hit the artificial intelligence sector this week as DeepSeek, a China-based chatbot, unveiled its latest AI models—trained for just $6 million. That’s a fraction of the cost U.S. companies typically spend,

The watchdog blocked access to DeepSeek after the companies that provide the DeepSeek chatbot service allegedly failed to provide it with information about the personal data collected.

Italy's data protection authority said on Thursday it had blocked Chinese artificial intelligence model DeepSeek over a lack of information on its use of personal data.