US chip giant Nvidia suffered a record wipeout on Monday after Chinese startup DeepSeek upended the tech sector — and the rout cost its CEO Jensen Huang more than $20 billion in a single day.
DeepSeek said it built its new AI model in just two months for less than $6 million – a fraction of the training costs of its US rivals – and without access to Nvidia’s powerful, pricey computer chips, which are subject to the US government’s export controls.
Shares of Nvidia plunged as much as 18% as the market reckoned with the possibility that the world’s largest supplier of AI chips could face less demand as models get more efficient.
The selloff erased a whopping $560 billion off Nvidia’s market capitalization – the largest single-day company decline in the history of the US stock market, according to Bloomberg. Nvidia already held the record after a 9% last September caused $279 billion in value to evaporate.
Huang’s personal net worth also took a major hit, plunging $20.7 billion to $103.7 billion – a decline of more than 16% since the start of the day, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
Other major AI players also got battered in the selloff. The tech-heavy Nasdaq index was down 3.44% or 687 points as of 1:30 pm ET.
Google parent Alphabet, which has invested heavily in AI development under CEO Sundar Pichai, was down 3.27%.
Microsoft, which has poured billions into Sam Altman’s OpenAI, was down 3.36%. Amazon shares were down less than 1%, while Meta shares were slightly up.
Elon Musk-led Tesla, which has close ties to Nvidia and is integrating AI across its product lineup, fell nearly 3%. Musk’s personal fortune was down about $4 billion to $434 billion, though he still ranks as the richest person in the world.
Constellation Energy, a nuclear power plant operator, sank more than 19% on fears that AI would guzzle less energy than necessary going forward. Electricity generator Vistra Corp fell 21%.
