Will DeepSeek disrupt American AI’s first-mover advantage?

There’s a concept in business called the first-mover advantage. Basically, it means that if you’re the first company with a successful product in a new market, you have the opportunity to dominate the market and fend off rivals. But that advantage can be short-lived. Take Netscape Navigator, the first popular commercial web browser. Microsoft entered the field with Internet Explorer, and it wasn’t long before Navigator crashed. In AI chatbots, two of the first movers are OpenAI and Anthropic. But recently the Chinese company DeepSeek made a splash with an AI chatbot that it reportedly developed for a fraction of what its competitors have spent. Marketplace’s Stephanie Hughes spoke with historian Margaret O’Mara, author of the book “The Code: Silicon Valley and the Remaking of America,” about whether America’s artificial intelligence industry should be worried about newcomers like DeepSeek.