Key Takeaways AI stocks had a volatile week as Wall Street reckoned with the implications of a sophisticated, cost-efficient AI model from Chinese start-up DeepSeek.Semiconductor stocks such as Nvidia and Broadcom sold off on Monday as investors worried DeepSeek's efficiencies would temper enthusiasm for AI infrastructure spending.

While the demand is there, it's clear that's not the sole reason why Nvidia's RTX 50 series is impossible to find in stores. Many retailers received fairly low stock quantities, as Nvidia reportedly experienced manufacturing issues.

DeepSeek, a Chinese artificial intelligence (AI) start-up, is sending shock waves through the U.S. tech sector by demonstrating its latest AI assistant, which achieves performance comparable to or even surpassing some of the world's best chatbots.

According to a paper authored by the lab, the DeepSeek-R1 model outperforms cutting-edge models such as OpenAI’s o1 and Meta’s Llama AI models across multiple benchmarks.

DeepSeek stunned the tech world with the release of its R1 "reasoning" model, matching or exceeding OpenAI's reasoning model for a fraction of the cost.

Nvidia stock surged as the AI chipmaker began to recover from a massive decline the prior day that shaved nearly $600 billion off its market cap.