The tech-heavy Nasdaq composite closed down nearly 3% on Monday, with shares of AI-focused chipmaker Nvidia plunging 17% and shaving nearly $590 billion from the company’s market cap.

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.

Monday’s DeepSeek sell-off may have rattled investors who picked up shares of a top semiconductor play at any time over the past few weeks. Undoubtedly, it’s not hard to imagine many new retail investors panicking in the face of Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA) stock’s sudden double-digit percentage decline.

Technology stocks regained ground on Tuesday, a day after a low-cost Chinese AI model rattled markets, while traders rotated back into the dollar from safe-haven currencies. The tech rebound boosted Wall Street's main stock indices,