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.

By some measures, Boston’s startup ecosystem has been left far behind Silicon Valley in the race to develop artificial intelligence. But the shocking emergence of Chinese AI chatbot DeepSeek could actually help Boston catch up.