Breakthrough by China’s DeepSeek sparks market rout

Good morning. In today’s newsletter:

• DeepSeek’s breakthrough sparks tech sell-off

• Vanke’s crisis reignites fears for China’s property sector

• India worries over China’s planned dam in Tibet

Technology stocks plunged yesterday after Chinese artificial intelligence start-up DeepSeek stunned Silicon Valley with advances apparently achieved with far less computing power than US rivals.

Shares in California-based Nvidia, one of the biggest beneficiaries of spending on AI chips, dropped almost 17 per cent, wiping out about $600bn of market value, a record loss for any company.

DeepSeek last week released its latest large language AI model, which achieved a comparable performance to that of US rival OpenAI, even though the company has previously claimed to use far fewer Nvidia chips.

Venture capital investor Marc Andreessen called the new Chinese model “AI’s Sputnik moment”, drawing a comparison with the Soviet Union stunning the US by putting the first satellite into orbit.

The results sent a shockwave through markets on Monday, as investors reassessed the likely future investment in AI hardware. Read more about the sell-off — and why some AI researches have questioned the hype surrounding DeepSeek’s breakthrough.

Here’s what else we’re keeping tabs on today:

• Economic data: Japan releases the services producer price index for December.

• Lunar New Year: Financial markets are closed in China, Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea and other Asian countries for Lunar New Year’s eve.

India’s Budget this Saturday will decide the economic future of the world’s most populous country in a crucial year. Have questions? Email us at firstft@ft.com or hit “reply” and remember to include your name and where you’re writing from. We’ll answer them in a special weekend edition of the newsletter.

Five more top stories

1. Leading Chinese property developer Vanke has forecast a $6.2bn annual loss and announced the sudden resignation of its top leadership, reigniting fears for the country’s economically critical real estate sector. The “sudden and simultaneous” resignations were “unprecedented in recent memory” for a big player such as Vanke, said one analyst.

2. Tesla is suing the EU over tariffs the bloc imposed on imports of electric vehicles from China. The lawsuit follows similar claims by Germany’s BMW and several Chinese carmakers, and marks the latest confrontation between Tesla’s billionaire boss Elon Musk and Brussels.

3. The chair and head of television at Japan’s Fuji Media Holdings are to step down immediately, as a sexual misconduct investigation into a former entertainment star continues to hammer the reputation of one of the country’s most powerful media empires. But shareholders said Fuji had not gone far enough to address the roots of the crisis.

4. Taiwan has drawn up a blacklist of 52 Chinese-owned ships that use flags of convenience, in an effort to regulate part of a rapidly growing “shadow fleet” that is causing global security concerns. The move comes amid explosive growth in the number of ageing vessels that evade oversight and hide their identity with deceptive signalling.

5. The Trump administration said it was pausing punitive tariffs against Colombia after its leader agreed to grant entry to US military flights deporting migrants. The announcement appeared to avert a possible trade war between the two allies after Colombia denied entry to two US military aircraft carrying deportees on Sunday.

News in-depth

Denton Peng, the onetime “solar king” of China who was briefly the country’s youngest billionaire, emigrated to California in 2018 with plans to defibrillate a moribund industry: electric buses. But the struggles of his company, Phoenix Motor, illustrate the inherent challenge of manufacturing electric vehicles in the US and the seemingly quixotic goal of competing with China’s EV industry.

We’re also reading . . . 

• Hong Kong IPO revival?: Bankers expect the territory to benefit from US-China tensions and the sluggish mainland Chinese equity market.

• Gazans return home: The opening of a military corridor yesterday allowed hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians to march north. These photos captured the scene.

• Legal services: Why the billable hour is still king in the legal world.

Chart of the day

India has voiced concern about China’s plans to build the world’s largest dam in Tibet, as the two countries attempt to repair relations following deadly border clashes in 2020. The proposed Yarlung Tsangpo river dam would be three times larger than China’s Three Gorges, currently the world’s largest hydropower facility.

Take a break from the news . . . 

From impressive novels about female rage and a relentless stalker, to an inventive tale set in brutal modern Britain — Suzi Feay shares her top picks for the best new debut fiction.