The emergence of DeepSeek is a positive for this ‘Mag 7’ giant, analysts say

Published Tue, Jan 28 202510:22 AM ESTUpdated Tue, Jan 28 20251:29 PM EST

Shares of Apple may actually benefit from the emergence of DeepSeek's artificial intelligence technology, according to Wall Street analysts. Tech stocks melted down on Monday after Chinese startup DeepSeek emerged as a new threat to current levels of investment in AI. The technology-heavy Nasdaq Composite ended 3.1% lower, but Apple was an exception, climbing 3.2% Monday. AAPL 5D mountain Apple shares over the past five days The reason that Apple managed to buck a massive technology sell-off comes down to the iPhone maker being "the ultimate play on having an LLM in your pocket," according to Bank of America, referring to large language models used in AI. In fact, BofA analyst Wamsi Mohan believes the emergence of DeepSeek could eventually help Apple's bottom line. "On a day when AI stocks were down double-digit percent, Apple shares were up 3% as investors realize the potential for edge AI and there is a flight to safety driven by Apple's earnings resiliency," Mohan wrote. "If DeepSeek is truly able to lower the cost of AI inferencing and better models are developed faster and cheaper, then edge AI applications and Apple as the edge device maker, stands to benefit." In a Tuesday note, TD Cowen analyst Krish Sankar agreed. "Market focus on DeepSeek and efficient AI models (similar to AAPL's AFM LLM) could accelerate AI app innovation and mobile upgrades," Sankar said, referring to the Apple Foundation Model . "The advent of low-cost, efficient LLM models such as DeepSeek R1 could drive smartphone upgrade interest but creation of productive, end applications is still an important element." Besides potentially benefiting from DeepSeek's technology, Baird analyst William Power said Apple faces "limited competitive impact from DeepSeek AI" versus other peers. "While DeepSeek AI has raised concerns for some of the AI infrastructure leaders, AAPL is less exposed, and is arguably well positioned to benefit from the potential expansion of GenAI capabilities," he wrote, "without spending tens of billions of dollars on LLMs or infrastructure." — CNBC's Michael Bloom contributed to this report.