STILL IN THE BLACK

World’s Richest People Lost $108 Billion in AI Stock Selloff Sparked by DeepSeek

Don’t worry, they still have many billions left.

The world’s richest people lost a combined $108 billion after global tech investors dumped their AI stocks on Monday over concerns that Chinese AI startup DeepSeek would devalue them. They included Nvidia Corp. co-founder Jensen Huang, whose fortune dropped by $20.1 billion, and Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, who lost $22.6 billion. The losses represented 20 percent and 12 percent of their respective fortunes, which should leave Huang with approximately $80.4 billion and Ellison with $165.4 billion. The Chinese company DeepSeek sent rival stocks—including Nvidia and Oracle—into a tailspin after it announced its free DeepSeek R1 chatbot over the weekend. According to the company, DeepSeek1 cost just $5.6 million to develop, and yet it quickly overtook U.S. rival OpenAI’s ChatGPT as the top download. That in turn called into question Silicon Valley’s strategy of hoarding semiconductors and energy sources, and spending billions of dollars to develop and run AI systems. Big Tech firms are expected to spend $200 billion in 2025, despite generating limited revenue from AI so far. The markets have nonetheless rewarded the investments with record-high valuations, making their owners so unfathomably rich they can absorb a $20 billion hit.