When there's an innovative technology that's useful to the general population and it's affordable, people will use it, said Vic Shao, founder of DC Grid, which delivers off-grid, direct current power to data centers and electric vehicle charging stations.

The chatbot from China appears to perform a number of tasks as well as its American competitors do, but it censors topics such as Tiananmen Square.

The DeepSeek chatbot, known as R1, responds to user queries just like its U.S.-based counterparts. Early testing released by DeepSeek suggests that its quality rivals that of other AI products, while the company says it costs less and uses far fewer specialized chips than do its competitors.