The world’s wealthiest tech moguls, led by Nvidia co-founder Jensen Huang, saw their fortunes plunge by $108 billion on Monday. A tech-driven market selloff triggered the steep decline after Chinese AI developer DeepSeek surged to prominence. This has been seen to challenge Silicon Valley’s dominance.
Jensen Huang faced the sharpest loss, with his net worth dropping by $20.1 billion, nearly 20%. Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison lost $22.6 billion, while Dell’s Michael Dell and Binance’s Changpeng “CZ” Zhao saw reductions of $13 billion and $12.1 billion, respectively. In total, tech-sector tycoons accounted for 85% of the $94 billion drop tracked by the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
The selloff followed the unexpected rise of DeepSeek’s R1 chatbot, an ultra-efficient AI model developed on a modest $5.6 million budget. The chatbot quickly climbed to the top of global app download charts, disrupting markets. This forced DeepSeek to restrict new user signups to Chinese phone numbers due to overwhelming demand.
DeepSeek’s lean development approach contrasts sharply with Silicon Valley’s capital-heavy strategies. U.S. tech giants like Meta, Alphabet, and Microsoft have invested billions in cutting-edge GPUs and infrastructure to power their AI models. For instance, Meta plans to spend $60–65 billion on AI initiatives in 2025, far outpacing analyst expectations.
DeepSeek’s success raises questions about Silicon Valley’s reliance on expensive systems. It also showcases the ingenuity of Chinese developers working under U.S. export restrictions on advanced GPUs. Speculations have emerged that labs like DeepSeek may have quietly secured large stocks of restricted Nvidia chips to bypass these limitations.
Despite the selloff, not all tech billionaires faced losses. Mark Zuckerberg’s wealth increased by $4.3 billion as Meta rebounded, and Jeff Bezos gained $632 million by day’s end.
Meanwhile, DeepSeek’s rise continues to reshape the global AI landscape.
