People across China have taken to social media to hail the success of its homegrown tech startup DeepSeek and its founder, after the company unveiled its newest artificial intelligence model, sending shock waves through Silicon Valley and Wall Street.

For the second time in the last month, a Chinese app has skyrocketed to the top spot in Apple’s App Store. The first was Xiaohongshu, or RedNote, which saw a sudden surge in downloads by United States users seeking an alternative to TikTok in anticipation of the ban on that app,

With a model that offers comparable performance at seemingly a fraction of the cost, the DeepSeek chatbot is causing a reckoning over American dominance in the tech industry. The U.S. has imposed sanctions on advanced chip sales to slow down progress in AI elsewhere.

Government policies, generous funding and a pipeline of AI graduates have helped Chinese firms create advanced LLMs.

The sudden rise of Chinese AI app DeepSeek has leaders in Washington and Silicon Valley grappling with how to keep the U.S. ahead in the crucial technology.