On the New York stock market, the tech-heavy Nasdaq index dropped more than 3 percent on Monday, as China's low-cost artificial intelligence model sparked a sell-off in shares of US chipmakers.

Investors became increasingly concerned about the competitiveness of US IT firms in the AI sector, after China's startup DeepSeek rolled out a cheaper generative AI model.

US semiconductor giant Nvidia, which supplies chips for AI technology, saw its shares sink nearly 17 percent. Shares of other tech firms, which had led the recent trend with higher stock prices, were also sold off.

US business news broadcaster CNBC said that nearly 600 billion dollars of Nvidia's stock market value had been erased. It was the largest-ever one-day loss for a company on Wall Street.

Market players say that the race to develop AI at a lower cost will likely become more intense, due to the emergence of DeepSeek.

They say that share prices will be driven by what explanations major IT firms give, when they release earnings reports this week.

On the foreign exchange market, the yen gained against the dollar following the sell-off of US tech shares. The Japanese currency briefly advanced to the upper 153 level.