An AI-powered chatbot by the Chinese company DeepSeek has quickly become the most downloaded free app on Apple's store, following its January release in the US. The app's sudden popularity, as well as DeepSeek's reportedly low costs compared to those of US-based AI companies, have thrown financial markets into a spin.

A frenzy over an artificial intelligence chatbot made by Chinese tech startup DeepSeek was upending stock markets Monday and fueling debates over the economic and geopolitical competition between the U.

DeepSeek released an open-source artificial intelligence model in December, saying it took only two months and less than $6 million to create it.