Nvidia is the gold standard and leading provider of the graphics processing units (GPUs) used to train and run AI systems. The company is believed to control as much as 98% of the data center GPU market, according to semiconductor analyst firm TechInsights. If AI models can be trained on lower-cost, inferior chips, Nvidia has a lot to lose.

Some AI researchers hailed DeepSeek’s R1 as a breakthrough on the same level as DeepMind’s AlphaZero, a 2017 model that became superhuman at the board games Chess and Go by purely playing against itself and improving, rather than observing any human games.