By Aditya Soni and Deborah Mary Sophia (Reuters) -Days after Chinese upstart DeepSeek revealed a breakthrough in cheap AI computing that shook the U.S. technology industry, the chief executives of Microsoft and Meta defended massive spending that they said was key to staying competitive in the new field.

In an apparent response to the attention on a new AI model out of China, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella posted online

Chinese AI startup DeepSeek's model led to increased scrutiny on Microsoft's AI spending.

DeepSeek is causing havoc throughout the AI industry. U.S.-based tech companies that have heavily invested in AI saw their stocks take a tumble this week after the China-based startup released a new AI model on par with OpenAI's latest model, yet much cheaper to train — plus, DeepSeek made it free and open source.

Sources at Open AI believe DeepSeek unlawfully distilled data from ChatGPT, Open AI and Microsoft begin investigation.

DeepSeek’s impact on the current AI industry and big companies’ shares. The emergence of DeepSeek shook the foundations of the artificial intelligence industry as we know it.