Global technology shares slid on Monday amid a frenzy over Chinese startup DeepSeek's AI chatbot as South Korean stock markets remain closed in the Lunar New Year break running through Thursday.  

The tech-heavy NASDAQ lost 612 points or nearly three-point-one percent, closing Monday at 19-thousand 341-point-83, as investors started to question the sustainability of high-tech chip demands.

NVIDIA shares on Monday dropped nearly 17 percent, shedding almost 600 billion U.S. dollars.

China's DeepSeek recently rolled out a free open-source AI assistant, claiming that it's performance is on par with ChatGPT and other top chatbots while being more cost-effective in using expensive NVIDIA chips.

The startup claimed that it had spent just five-point-six million dollars powering the AI app while American companies poured in hundreds of millions of dollars to develop their flagship models.