DeepSeek topped the Apple App Store chart and sparked fears the Chinese company was quickly catching up with OpenAI's ChatGPT while costing far less.

Shares in Nvidia, whose semiconductors power the AI industry, fell nearly 17 percent on Wall Street, erasing nearly $600 billion of its market value.

It all stemmed from a free AI assistant launched by Chinese startup DeepSeek last week that the firm sa id uses less data at a fraction of the cost of services available currently, garnering significant attention worldwide including from OpenAI CEO Sam Altman who called it an “impressive model”.