Silicon Valley and Washington leaders said the app shows China can challenge the U.S. The Nasdaq lost 3 percent and chipmaker Nvidia shed $589 billion in market capitalization.

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

U.S. stock futures steadied, the dollar ticked higher and tech stocks in Asia slid on Tuesday following a wave of selling as apparent advances by a Chinese AI startup cast doubt on U.S. dominance and spending in one of the market's hottest sectors.