President Donald Trump has labeled the AI chatbot developed by the Chinese company DeepSick as a ‘wake-up call’ for American tech companies, highlighting the growing global competition in Artificial Intelligence (AI).
DeepSick launched its ARVON model chatbot in late 2024, claiming it was developed at a much lower cost compared to rivals like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini.
The release of DeepSick’s AI has had a significant impact on the U.S. tech market, leading to a $1 trillion drop in tech stock values. The market capitalization of the leading chipmaker, NVIDIA, fell by $600 billion in one day, marking the largest single-day decline in U.S. stock market history.
Reacting to DeepSick’s rise, President Trump commented, “The launch of DeepSick’s AI by a Chinese company is a wake-up call for our industry. It sends a message that we need to focus and sharpen our competitive edge.”
Trump praised DeepSick for achieving high performance with limited resources, stating, “This is a positive development because it shows that we don’t need to spend huge amounts of money to achieve great results.”
On Monday, DeepSick’s Assistant surpassed ChatGPT in downloads on Apple’s App Store. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman admitted to being impressed by DeepSick’s progress but emphasized that the U.S. industry would respond by accelerating its development. “The ARVON model from DeepSick is impressive in terms of value,” Altman posted on X (formerly Twitter), “We are focused on improving and are motivated to introduce new innovations.”
The effects of DeepSick’s success have spread beyond the U.S., with stock declines seen globally. Japan’s Nikkei stock average dropped 1.3% on Tuesday, and major Japanese tech stocks also saw losses. Advantest fell by 11%, Tokyo Electron by 6%, and Disco Corporation by nearly 3%. Tech giant SoftBank’s shares dropped more than 5%.
Meanwhile, other major Asian markets remained closed for the New Year holidays.
DeepSick claims that its ARVON model outperforms OpenAI’s Oven-Mini model across various benchmarks. Research from Artificial Analysis ranks DeepSick’s models above those developed by Google, Meta, and Anthropic in terms of overall quality.
Founded by Liang Wenfeng, who also manages the hedge fund High-Flyer Capital, DeepSick uses AI to detect patterns in stock prices. Liang started purchasing NVIDIA chips for AI development in 2021 and established DeepSick in Hangzhou, China, in 2023.
Rather than focusing on commercial products, DeepSick prioritizes research. Both DeepSick Assistant and its core code are available for free download, and its models are said to be more affordable to run compared to OpenAI’s Oven.