DeepSeek tops the U.S. App Store and jolts AI markets
DeepSeek passes ChatGPT on the U.S. App Store's free chart as Nvidia loses roughly $593 billion in market value during an AI-sector selloff.
What happened
Event details
One week after R1's release, the DeepSeek app reached number one on the U.S. App Store's free-app chart. The ranking turned an open-model debate into a simple consumer signal that spread across global media. On the same day, Nvidia fell about 17%, erasing roughly $592.7 billion in market value as investors reassessed assumptions about frontier-model compute and capital spending. The chart measured short-term download momentum, not total users or retention, and the market move was a repricing rather than cash destroyed by DeepSeek.
Assessment
Why it matters
The App Store result and market reaction transformed DeepSeek from an open-model story into a global technology and finance event.