The wealthiest individuals lost billions after the launch of the Chinese chatbot DeepSeek.

As reported by Economic Times, the 500 richest individuals in the world, led by Nvidia Corp co-founder Jensen Huang, lost a total of $108 billion on January 27, 2025.

Nvidia's stock plummeted nearly 17 percent, marking the largest single-day drop in Wall Street history. The Nasdaq index fell by 3.1 percent, while the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index dropped by 9.2 percent, making it the worst day since March 2020. Shares of Oracle, Broadcom, and data center company Vertiv Holdings each fell by more than 13 percent, whereas energy companies tied to AI infrastructure demand, including Vistra and Constellation Energy, experienced a decline of 28 percent.

The startup DeepSeek, founded in 2023 by Chinese entrepreneur Liang Wenfeng, developed its own chatbot at an estimated cost of around six million dollars. In comparison, the American company OpenAI spent approximately 100 million dollars just on training GPT-4.

A key feature of the DeepSeek R1 model is its ability to perform logical reasoning before providing an answer, distinguishing it from its competitors.