Nvidia Loses $589 Billion as DeepSeek Batters Stock

Wall Street had a shock to the system on concerns that a cheap artificial intelligence-model from Chinese startup DeepSeek could make valuations that have powered the bull market tough to justify. From New York to London and Tokyo, equities got hit hard on Monday. And while the slide did come after a torrid rally, the underlying reasons behind Monday’s rout could cause longer-term damage. The Nasdaq 100 sank 3% while the S&P 500 dropped 1.5%. A closely watched gauge of chipmakers also plunged the most since March 2020. Nvidia, heretofore the posterchild of America’s AI frenzy, sank 17%—the biggest market-cap loss for a single stock ever. But no hard feelings says Jensen Huang: Nvidia’s CEO just called DeepSeek’s latest innovation “excellent.”

While your 401(k) may have taken a tumble today, it wasn’t a great day for the world’s richest, either. Led by Nvidia’s Huang, the planet’s 500 wealthiest lost a combined $108 billion thanks to DeepSeek. Billionaires whose fortunes are linked to AI were unsurprisingly the biggest losers: Huang saw his fortune fall $20.1 billion, a 20% drop, while Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison’s $22.6 billion loss was larger in absolute terms, but represented just 12% of his fortune, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Dell’s Michael Dell lost $13 billion, and Binance Holdings co-founder Changpeng “CZ” Zhao dropped $12.1 billion.