Deep Trouble President Donald Trump has responded to the rapid rise of the Chinese startup DeepSeek, whose recently released AI model has him and his Silicon Valley pals looking like a bunch of chumps. “The release of DeepSeek AI from a Chinese company should be a wake-up call for our industries that we need to be laser-focused on competing to win,” Trump said Monday at a GOP event in Florida. It’s a relatively measured take from Trump, considering his usual — though occasionally wavering — hawkishness on China, complete with a metaphorical stern glance to the domestic tech sector. The Republican president also added that he viewed the model’s low-cost as a “positive development.” “Instead of spending billions and billions, you’ll spend less and you’ll come up with hopefully the same solution,” Trump said. Stars Malign Released last week, DeepSeek’s open-source R1 model rivals the West’s best at a fraction of the cost. It was developed using older Nvidia AI chips, for purportedly under $6 million. Despite these limitations, R1 matches up to leading chatbots like OpenAI’s o1 model, and in certain benchmarks, even surpasses them. For Trump and his tech allies — themselves often recent convertees to his political enclave — the timing couldn’t have been worse. The new administration had just announced its Stargate deal, which would raise $500 billion of private capital towards building AI infrastructure in the US. Its backers included OpenAI, Oracle, Softbank, and Emirati state-run investment firm MGX. That staggering sum is emblematic of the outrageous…Trump Responds After DeepSeek Humiliates His Splashy AI Announcement