Entrepreneur Marc Andreessen, known for co-writing Mosaic, one of the world’s first web browsers, wrote Sunday on X that “DeepSeek R1 is AI’s Sputnik moment,” likening it to the space race between the U.S. and the Soviet Union and the event that forced the U.S. to realize that its technological abilities were not unassailable.

The sudden popularity of a Chinese artificial intelligence app called DeepSeek pummeled tech stocks and captivated Silicon Valley on Monday, prompting debate in political and tech industry circles about how the United States can maintain its lead in AI.