America’s superinflated tech stocks had seemed due for a correction for months, but the trigger has come from an unexpected source. The latest large language model from China’s artificial intelligence start-up DeepSeek may not be quite a “Sputnik moment”. There are parallels, even so, with the early space race, when ingenuity helped Soviet engineers keep pace with and sometimes surpass US rivals, despite their relative lack of computing power and cutting-edge technologies. The US went on to win the Moon race, and establish a sustainable edge in space. But DeepSeek’s breakthrough upturns the assumptions that have underpinned US tech valuations, of an unassailable supremacy in AI that would be extended by spending billions of dollars on chips and infrastructure.
幾個月來，美國的超高估值科技股似乎早已積累了調整的需求，但真正的導火索卻來自一個意想不到的來源：中國人工智慧新創公司深度求索(DeepSeek)的最新大型語言模型。這一突破或許還算不上是「斯普特尼克時刻」(Sputnik moment)，但它確實與早期的太空競賽有相似之處。當時，儘管蘇聯在計算能力和尖端技術方面相對落後，但工程師們憑藉卓越的創造力，不僅能與美國競爭對手並駕齊驅，甚至在某些方面超越。美國最終贏得了登月競賽，並在太空探索中建立了可持續的優勢。然而，深度求索的這一突破顛覆了支撐美國科技股估值的核心假設：即美國在人工智慧領域的無可爭議的霸主地位可以通過投入數十億美元用於晶片和基礎設施來進一步鞏固和延續。