Why KLA, ASML, and Lam Research Stocks All Dropped Today

Over the weekend, Chinese artificial intelligence (AI) start-up DeepSeek announced that, since December, it has been operating a new open-source, free-to-use large language model (LLM), and the news is shaking up the AI ecosystem.According to news reports, DeepSeek's new LLM cost only $6 million to develop and was put together in just two months' time. The cut-rate LLM, however, is reported to perform basically as well as OpenAI's ChatGPT, raising questions about just how much of a lead Western tech companies really have over China -- and whether demand for advanced, high-speed semiconductor chips for AI will really be as big as everyone has been saying it will. Worries that chips demand may not in fact grow as expected frightened investors in the companies that build equipment for manufacturing these chips. As of 11:55 a.m. ET, shares of semiconductor manufacturing equipment company Lam Research (NASDAQ: LRCX) are down 5.6%, KLA (NASDAQ: KLAC) stock is off 6.3%, and ASML Holding (NASDAQ: ASML) has slid 6.5%.Continue readingWeiter zum vollständigen Artikel bei MotleyFool Weiter zum vollständigen Artikel bei MotleyFool