DeepSeek's AI model jolts global tech firms as Nvidia loses nearly $600b in market cap

Global technology shares sank on Tuesday, as a market rout sparked by the emergence of a low-cost Chinese artificial intelligence model entered its second day, making investors question the sky-high valuation and dominance of AI bellwethers.

Shares of Nvidia, a leader in the AI chip market, fell 17% on Monday, wiping $593 billion from its market value – a record one-day loss for any company – and dragged U.S. stocks lower.

By Tuesday, Nvidia shares were up nearly 6% in Frankfurt, while those in Oracle rose 3.4% and AI data analytics company Palantir rose 2.97%, while tech shares in Europe wilted.

The sell-off was prompted by the release of a free AI assistant launched by China's DeepSeek last week that the startup said uses less data at a fraction of the cost of services currently available. That garnered attention worldwide, although scepticism over DeepSeek's cost claims lingers.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman AFP

The sell-off was sparked by concerns that DeepSeek was presenting increased global competition in the AI battle, according to CNBC.

"We are on the front edge of an urgent re-evaluation of a narrative that has gripped the market for almost two years. That makes it hard to shrug off after 36 hours," said Brent Donnelly, president of trading and analytics firm Spectra Markets.

Data centre landlords tumbled in Australia.

An impressive model, says OpenAI CEO

Nvidia accounted for most of the 3% drop in the Nasdaq on Monday though selling extended from Tokyo to New York and hit everything with a slice of the AI supply chain, from cable makers to data centres, power utilities and software firms.

Even oil prices dropped 2% on worries about energy demand.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman called it an "impressive model", while US President Donald Trump called it "a wakeup call for our industries."

"We will obviously deliver much better models and also it's legit invigorating to have a new competitor!" Altman, the head of the AI firm behind ChatGPT, said in a social media post.

China years behind US?

DeepSeek bursting onto the AI scene, seemingly out of nowhere, has upended the industry's perception that China was years behind its bigger US rivals.

Investors have dumped tech stocks everywhere, with ripples felt from Tokyo to Amsterdam to Silicon Valley.

Some of Japan's biggest tech companies came under pressure for a second day. Chip-testing equipment maker Advantest , a supplier to Nvidia, lost 10% to add to Monday's 9% drop, while tech start-up investor SoftBank Group slid 5%.

The building housing the headquarters of Chinese AI startup DeepSeek in Hangzhou. AFP

"It's clearly a sell first, ask questions later approach, and we've actually seen that kind of move in the past in Japan," said Kei Okamura, a portfolio manager at Neuberger Berman, referring to a global market meltdown in August headlined by Japan's Nikkei.

In Europe on Tuesday, shares in Dutch semiconductor company ASML, which ended down 7.1% on Monday, fell 1%, reversing a tentative early rally, while shares in Schneider Electric, ASM International and Infineon fell 1.2-4.7%.

In the US, Broadcom fell 17.4% on Monday, while ChatGPT backer Microsoft fell 2.1% and Google parent Alphabet closed down 4.2%. The Philadelphia semiconductor index tumbled 9.2% – its deepest percentage drop since March 2020.

No margin of error

The selloff has brought into the spotlight the crowded positioning among investors and the billions of dollars US tech giants are spending to develop AI capabilities, as well how expensive some of these companies' shares are relative to the broader market.

Prior to Monday's sell-off, Nvidia's shares were trading at nearly 60 times the value of its earnings, compared with 22 for the entire S&P 500, according to LSEG data.

"What makes Monday's tech sell-off so jarring is that the valuations of many of these AI and tech companies offer no margin of error," said David Bahnsen, chief investment officer at The Bahnsen Group.

"The excessive weighting these tech stocks have in many investor portfolios and the high concentration these tech stocks have in the market indices was a significant and under-appreciated risk issue."

The hype around AI has powered a huge flow of capital into equities, inflating valuations and lifting stock markets to record highs, leading to an increase of around $10 trillion in the market value of "Magnificent Seven" companies since ChatGPT kicked off the AI boom in November 2022.

Enter the robots

Investors have also borrowed massively to buy these pricey tech stocks. Monday's selloff likely forced a lot of selling of other assets to cover any losses and, with far more algorithmic trading models active in the market, those moves would have been exacerbated, according to Rob Almeida, global investment strategist and portfolio manager at MFS International.

"When you get days like this, behind the scenes, what might be exacerbating it is leverage that might be being unwound and isn't being accounted for," he said.

"So you combine all of these things, companies over-earning, maybe the AI supply chain being too full, valuations really expensive, huge leverage built up in the system and too many robots selling at the same time, and it all becomes obvious after the fact."

A number of Big Tech companies, including Apple and Microsoft, report earnings this week and executives will be keen to assuage concerns about capital spending.