Lots of questions are still swirling this morning about the implications of DeepSeek, the Chinese start-up whose A.I. tools drove yesterday’s stock market plunge. Is it really as good as the closed-source frontier models made by OpenAI and Google? Did DeepSeek really use fewer chips? Did it piggyback off the work of U.S. players? And if it’s as good as some have suggested, how will its rise scramble the software, hardware and energy sectors? We break down what we know — and still don’t know — in our report below.

Plus, DealBook’s Lauren Hirsch has a scoop on Mark Zuckerberg’s continuing political evolution.

The $600 billion hit

Stock futures are looking up after Monday’s markets blood bath, as investors take stock of what the Chinese start-up DeepSeek really means for the artificial intelligence business.

The emerging consensus is that DeepSeek — which appears to have built a credible rival to the best-funded American tech giants with a fraction of their resources — has upended the race for A.I. supremacy. Apple and Meta might end up being better positioned than initially thought, while Nvidia might not be in a disastrous position.

A.I. laggards might not be as behind as previously believed. Just look at who in the so-called Magnificent Seven group of tech giants was up on Monday. What gives?