Donald Trump warns China’s new DeepSeek AI is a ‘wake up call’ for Silicon Valley
Donald Trump warns China’s new DeepSeek AI is a ‘wake up call’ for Silicon Valley
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The Chinese start-up DeepSeek’s latest large language model has been described as a ‘Sputnik moment’ for the American tech industry. Donald Trump has praised China's new AI breakthrough as a "wake-up call" for American tech firms that ultimately "could be good" for the U.S.
Shares in hardware maker Nvidia and numerous other Silicon Valley companies plunged by a total of more than $1 trillion after Hangzhou-based start-up DeepSeek released its latest AI model. While he issued a warning in a speech at a Republican retreat in Miami on Monday, President Trump was also bullish about American companies' ability to take the pressure.
"The release of DeepSeek AI from a Chinese company should be a wake-up call for our industries — that we need to be laser-focused on competing to win," he said. "We have the greatest scientists in the world. Even Chinese leadership told me that .... 'Silicon Valley,' they said, 'there's nobody like those people.'".
He then said the breakthrough could be "very much a positive development" because it would save American companies "billions and billions" of dollars, though it wasn't clear exactly what he meant. "Under the Trump administration we're going to unleash our tech companies and we're going to dominate the future like never before," he vowed.
The news comes after Trump scrapped Joe Biden's 2023 safeguards on AI development and announced a new $500 billion investment fund for new data centers and power plants to fuel the industry. He has previously argued that although it's possible AI will "take over the human race,” American companies must "take the lead over China" and dominate the technology.
