🤖 DeepSeek carpe diem
Despite triggering a market wipeout, VCs and founders see massive upside from DeepSeek's breakthrough AI model. But the Tech Council says Australia needs to move quickly.
As Nvidia shed almost USD600 billion ($959 billion) in market cap on Monday — the largest single-day corporate value loss in US history — Australian VCs and founders saw opportunity in Silicon Valley's pain.
The US chipmaker's stunning fall from its position as the world's most valuable company came after Chinese AI lab DeepSeek announced it had built a competitive model for just USD6 million, using older restricted chips.
The revelation sent Nvidia's stock plummeting 17%, after a remarkable run that saw its value surge 239% in 2023 and another 171% in 2024 (although it did manage a 9% recovery on Tuesday).
But DeepSeek's arrival may not be all bad news.
James Tynan, partner at Square Peg, sees it as part of a broader transformation. "We've been investing in AI for over a decade, but this current wave is different from anything we've seen before. We anticipate change on the scale of the birth of the PC or the internet but happening in a fraction of the time," he says.
