Apple is well-positioned with its AI strategy as DeepSeek rocks the tech world, analysts and tech leaders told Fortune.

China just threw a curveball into the tough Artificial Intelligence (AI) race as DeepSeek’s chatbot app just skyrocketed to the number 1 spot on both the Google Play Store and Apple App Store in the United States.

The Chinese artificial intelligence app DeepSeek, which surged in popularity this week and sparked a sell-off in technology stocks, appeared to be unavailable on Wednesday in Apple and Google app stores in Italy.

These days, nothing is certain about the tech market or the world at large. Even Nvidia's seemingly bulletproof stock took a hammering on Monday, enduring

Deepseek collects similar data to American-based AI models, but Chinese laws could make that data more accessible to the government.

Top White House advisers this week expressed alarm that China's DeepSeek may have benefited from a method that allegedly piggybacks off the advances of U.S. rivals called "distillation." The technique,