Jensen Huang likely had an especially bad case of the Mondays when DeepSeek came to town. Of course, as one of the richest people in the world, the cofounder of Nvidia ended up skating away virtually unscathed. But that doesn’t mean the billionaire didn’t see a dent to his wealth.
By the close of markets on Jan. 27, Huang shed $20.1 billion, as his total net worth slipped to $101 billion—per the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. That represents “the biggest single-day loss of value for any public company in history,” writes Forbes. Nvidia declined to comment on the matter.
Huang, who cofounded Nvidia in 1993, owns roughly 3.4% of the company, according to Bloomberg. Indeed, the tech giant took a bit of a stumble yesterday, losing around $600 billion in market cap as shares plummeted by 17%. The manufacturing chip company is falling from great heights; this past summer, it surpassed a $3 trillion market cap.
The only other person who lost more was Oracle chairman Larry Ellison, who is now worth $186 billion after a decrease of $22.6 billion yesterday. Still, given he’s worth less than Ellison, Nvidia’s CEO saw a relatively greater blow to his worth.
Nvidia sent (at least temporarily) spinning post AI Sputnik
DeepSeek’s invention was called “AI’s Sputnik moment” by venture capitalist Marc Andreessen this Sunday.
The Chinese AI startup sent chills through Silicon Valley, as it claimed it had an AI product that would be cheaper to make than its competitors’. While it was just launched last week, it’s now the most downloaded free app in the United States. The news sent ripples into Wall Street, as U.S. tech stocks plummeted in what shaped up to be a rout.
“If these models turn out to be pretty capable, which they really are looking like, and they’re very cheap, then there’s a world where companies stop using OpenAI at scale,” William Falcon, CEO of Lightning AI, told Fortune. He added that this new development “also brings into question the valuation of all these companies.”
Despite DeepSeek’s impact on the company, even Nvidia seemed to recognize its larger influence in the tech world. “DeepSeek is an excellent AI advancement and a perfect example of test-time scaling,” an Nvidia spokesperson said to CNBC. “DeepSeek’s work illustrates how new models can be created using that technique, leveraging widely available models and compute that is fully export control compliant.”