Silicon Valley leaders confronted their first serious AI rival from China: DeepSeek. OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman, sensing the heat, said his company will launch some products a little earlier than planned.

A new A.I. model, released by a scrappy Chinese upstart, has rocked Silicon Valley and upended several fundamental assumptions about A.I. progress.

The Chinese artificial intelligence app DeepSeek became the most downloaded free app in the U.S. on Apple’s app store and its low cost claims are putting the pressure on major American tech companies.