Flag of USA and China on a processor, CPU or GPU microchip on a motherboard. US companies have become the latest collateral damage in US - China tech war. US limits, restricts AI chips sales to China.

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China’s DeepSeek turns AI on its head, with US tech stocks on track to lose $1 trillion in value

Nvidia could shed more than $350 billion today, as DeepSeek outscores OpenAI models on some measures.

1/27/25 8:43AM

Despite only being founded in 2023 and reportedly using inferior chips at a fraction of the cost of many of its competitors, Chinese AI lab DeepSeek released the R1 last week — a model that goes toe to toe with some of the biggest names in AI.

Its hardware efficiency, coupled with the fact that it’s free to use and open-source, is a potent cocktail that’s spooked the technology world over the weekend. DeepSeek’s output challenges the “spend billions to accelerate AI progress” narrative, and is sending stocks like Nvidia, Broadcom, and Microsoft plummeting in premarket trading — threatening to wipe as much as $1 trillion off America’s top tech names.

DeepTrouble

Indeed, the weekend buzz around the large language model — the fact that it “thinks” before it speaks, shows its workings, and matches OpenAI’s most powerful model, the o1, on a range of metrics — seems to have left much of Silicon Valley wowed and worried, in almost equal measure.

Per DeepSeek’s own figures, the R1 model outperforms the OpenAI o1 on a variety of key tests, shining particularly brightly in math, where it beats the latest model from Sam Altman’s company on three different tests. While it’s less consistent on coding and language tests — it fared particularly badly on the “SimpleQA” (not shown in chart above), a test evaluating the simple factual accuracy of the info that LLMs spit out — the differences are fairly slim, making the cost-effective R1 look impressive.

The Chinese company’s slimmed-down training costs, use of cheaper chips, API, and open-source model have hauled the endless drive for more chips and compute that’s driven much of the market for the last 18 months into question. Meta, for example, is planning to spend more than $60 billion on capital expenditures just this year.

At a time when people are wondering if we can trust TikTok due to Chinese government ties, many have similar questions about DeepSeek. Tech evangelist Marc Andreessen was among those singing R1’s praises over the last few days — though he may not have asked it about Tiananmen Square yet.

Tasha Matsumoto, Matt Phillips

4/17/26

The S&P 500, Nasdaq 100, and Russell 2000 close at record highs again as Strait of Hormuz is declared open

Stocks reached new record highs as risk-on sentiment flooded back into the markets, while oil tumbled.

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Matt Phillips4/17/26

With their recent surge, Intel shares just hit their highest level since the dot-com era

Intel’s surge of nearly 60% this month has the iconic American chipmaker’s stock price approaching levels last seen during the dot-com era. Bloomberg noted that shares just touched their highest intraday level since the turn of the century:

“The stock rose as much as 1.5% to $69.55, topping a peak it hit on Jan. 24, 2020. The shares are up 90% this year, after soaring 84% in 2025. Intel is now roughly 8% from its all-time closing high of $74.88, established on Aug. 31, 2000.”

That’s just the most recent late-’90s-era throwback we’ve been seeing in tech shares lately. Oracle is currently pacing for its best week since late 1999.

What’s even more remarkable, however, is that Intel’s forward price-to-earnings ratio today dwarfs the premiums the market was putting on the stock during the nuttiness of the dot-com mania.

That reflects the fact that the recent run-up in Intel shares is, essentially, giving the chip giant credit for a massive turnaround that hasn’t actually happened yet.

One also might wonder if the fact that Intel is partially owned by the US government means it’s more attractive — and therefore worth a higher premium — than other chipmakers without the state imprimatur.

Still, kind of startling.

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Netflix sinks following disappointing outlook as investors wait for more ad growth

Netflix shares are down more than 10% on Friday morning.

Max Knoblauch4/17/26

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Eli Lilly’s GLP-1 pill hit nearly 1,400 prescriptions in first week

Eli Lilly rose after preliminary numbers cited by Wall Street analysts showed strong uptake of its new weight-loss pill.

The FDA approved Foundayo on April 1 and shipments began on April 9. In its first week, roughly 1,400 US prescriptions were written for the drug, according to IQVIA data cited by Deustche Bank analysts in a Friday note.

Novo Nordisk, Lilly’s rival in the GLP-1 market, released its GLP-1 pill earlier this year, and early signs show that it’s expanding the market, inviting patients who were turned off by weekly injections. Novo’s pill had a stronger first week than Lilly’s, with its Wegovy pill hitting 3,071 US prescriptions in the first four days after its launch on January 5.

Lilly’s pill has an advantage over Novo’s, which is that it can be taken at any time of day, with or without food. Lilly disclosed in a February regulatory filing that it had $1.5 billion worth of prelaunch inventory ready ahead of the FDA approval — which is about as much as analysts polled by FactSet expect it to sell this year.

Eli Lilly makes the world’s bestselling drug. Can it keep the party going?

Claire Yubin Oh4/17/26

Critical Metals jumps after Greenland’s government approves CRML to take majority control of the Tanbreez mining project

Critical Metals is up more than 25% in premarket trading on Friday after the critical mining company announced that it now owns 92.5% of the Tanbreez rare earth deposit following an approval from the government of Greenland.

With that latest government support, Critical Minerals added an additional 50.5% stake to its ownership, reportedly acquired from Rimbal Pty Ltd, per Bloomberg News. With access to eight heavy rare earth elements often used in consumer electronics and defense, the site is one of the world’s largest undeveloped rare earth deposits and a key source of rare earth supply outside of China, according to the company.

In Critical Metals’ press release, Chairman Tony Sage commented that the approval “removes the most significant structural overhang on the project and provides the clarity to advance Tanbreez to production with confidence,” especially as Tanbreez’s location offers a significant logistical advantage through its year-round direct shipping access, compared to rival projects.

With 92.5% of the project now vested in Critical Metals Corp., and the remainder owned by European Lithium Ltd., CRML now has full control of the project and is seeking to accelerate development there, with plans for a new international airport and a “150-tonne bulk sample program,” which is slated for June 2026.