The little-known artificial intelligence firm has emphasized research, even as it emerged as the brainchild of a hedge fund.

Entrepreneur Marc Andreessen, known for co-writing Mosaic, one of the world’s first web browsers, wrote Sunday on X that “DeepSeek R1 is AI’s Sputnik moment,” likening it to the space race between the U.S. and the Soviet Union and the event that forced the U.S. to realize that its technological abilities were not unassailable.

Chinese tech startup DeepSeek said it was hit by a cyber attack on Monday that disrupted users’ ability to register on the site