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China's ChatGPT rival crushes US tech stocks

China's ChatGPT rival crushes US tech stocks

The rise in popularity of a Chinese competitor to ChatGPT has led to a drop in the shares of US tech companies. Nvidia lost its title as "the most valuable company in the world," and its CEO saw his fortune decrease by 20%. Oracle and Dell founders also incurred significant losses.

The collective wealth of the world’s 500 richest people fell by $108 billion on Monday, January 27, due to a slump in tech stocks following the success of the free chatbot DeepSeek-R1 from the Chinese company DeepSeek, Bloomberg reports.

The most significant losses were suffered by Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of US chipmaker Nvidia, whose fortune shrank by 20%, or $20.1 billion. According to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, his net worth now stands at $101 billion. Nvidia’s market value dropped by $600 billion, relinquishing its title as the "most valuable company in the world" to Apple and Microsoft. Its shares plunged nearly 18%.

Oracle Corp. co-founder Larry Ellison lost more in absolute terms – $22.6 billion – but this represented only 12% of his total fortune, Bloomberg noted. Dell founder Michael Dell saw a $13 billion drop in his net worth, while Binance founder Changpeng Zhao lost $12.1 billion.

The NASDAQ Composite index fell 3.1%, while the S&P 500 declined by 1.5%.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman spoke about the Chinese chatbot DeepSeek-R1:  

"DeepSeek-R1 is an impressive model, especially considering what they [the developers] have achieved at such a price. Of course, we’ll release much better models, but the emergence of a new competitor is truly inspiring!"


Author`s name
Pavel Morozov