The rapid ascent of Chinese AI startup DeepSeek has significantly impacted the wealth of several tech moguls. In January, the world’s richest individuals saw their collective wealth surge by $314 billion, equivalent to the combined annual salaries of 15 million workers. However, this growth was short-lived for many billionaire businessmen.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk was the hardest hit, losing an estimated $90 billion in net worth due to DeepSeek’s success. His net worth plummeted from $433 billion in early February to $349 billion by the end of the month. Other notable losers include Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, who lost around $20 billion, and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who saw his net worth decline by approximately $11 billion.
DeepSeek’s remarkable rise has had a profound impact on the tech industry, particularly on Nvidia. The AI chip-making giant has experienced a significant selloff, resulting in a staggering $600 billion loss in market value. According to Bloomberg, this decline is one of the largest in US stock market history.
Despite the losses, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang demonstrated sportsmanship and admiration for innovation during the company’s earnings call. “It’s an excellent innovation, but even more importantly, it has open-sourced a world-class reasoning AI model,” Huang said, adding that DeepSeek has “ignited global enthusiasm.”
Other billionaires who experienced losses:
- Larry Ellison, Oracle’s Chairman, suffered a personal loss of $27.6 billion, dropping from third to fifth richest person globally after Oracle’s stock plummeted 14%
- Michael Dell lost $12.4 billion due to the NVIDIA selloff.
- Google founder Larry Page’s net worth dropped $6.3 billion.
- Google investor Andreas von Bechtolsheim suffered a $5.4 billion loss.
About DeepSeek
DeepSeek, a Chinese artificial intelligence (AI) startup, has been making waves in the tech industry with its groundbreaking innovations. Founded by a team of AI experts, DeepSeek’s rapid rise has sent shockwaves through the tech industry, with many established players feeling the impact.
Notably, DeepSeek’s flagship product, the R1 model, is a low-cost, high-performance AI solution that has disrupted the market. This innovative model has been praised for its efficiency, scalability, and affordability. DeepSeek has also developed cutting-edge AI chip technology that enables faster, more efficient processing of complex AI algorithms.
