AI stocks listed in Hong Kong and China have soared since DeepSeek launched its AI model. Kingsoft Cloud soared 61%, and SMIC surged 27%.

Recently, affordable Chinese AI open-source chatbot DeepSeek took the world by storm, with a new model that raised questions over Silicon Valley's massive spending spree on the technology. US AI-related shares tanked.

In January, it released its latest model, DeepSeek R1, which it said rivalled technology developed by ChatGPT-maker OpenAI in its capabilities, while costing far less to create.

Deepseek says it has been able to do this cheaply - researchers behind it claim it cost $6m (£4.8m) to train, a fraction of the "over $100m" alluded to by OpenAI boss Sam Altman when discussing GPT-4.

It has also seemingly be able to minimise the impact of US restrictions on the most powerful chips reaching China.

The rally came as DeepSeek's emergence set the stage for tech's breakout moment for China. It marks a serious challenge to the capital-intensive AI model development that has long been dominated by Western firms, Dilin Wu, a research strategist at brokerage Pepperstone said.

"This shift is lowering industry barriers and proving the resilience of China's tech sector, sending a strong signal to traders. With US tech valuations stretched and under constant scrutiny, China and Hong Kong's tech stocks — offering lower valuations and higher growth potential — are becoming increasingly hard to ignore," said Wu.