DeepSeek topped the Apple AppStore chart and sparked fears the Chinese company is quickly catching up with OpenAI's ChatGPT while costing far less.

Premarket trading implied steep declines for U.S. markets, with the pain concentrated at companies at the forefront of the artificial intelligence boom.

Futures linked to the tech-heavy Nasdaq tumbled on Monday as the overwhelming popularity of an inexpensive Chinese artificial intelligence model sparked a selloff in AI-related shares, with megacap stocks including Nvidia the worst hit.

Global chip stocks slumped Monday on DeepSeek revealing it had developed AI models that nearly matched American rivals despite using inferior chips.

Nvidia was among the chip companies that saw huge losses in overnight trading over concerns about the small Chinese company's artificial intelligence model.