A lot of people and institutions lost a lot of money as Nvidia Corp. (NASDAQ: NVDA) shed $590 billion in market cap when the tech world realized how good the new Chinese DeepSeek artificial intelligence (AI) software is. The biggest loser by far was Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, who lost $20 billion in net worth in one day.
24/7 Wall St. Key Points:
-
Nvidia Corp. (NASDAQ: NVDA) CEO Jensen Huang lost $20 billion in net worth in one day.
-
If Chinese DeepSeek AI software is as good as claimed, his net worth will drop further.
-
Take this quiz to see if you’re on track to retire. (sponsored)
According to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, Huang is still the 15th richest man in the world. His net worth is $101 billion.
Huang has built Nvidia from primarily a gaming chip company that made graphics processors to an AI colossus. In its most recent quarter, Nvidia reported revenue of $35.7 billion, up 94% from the same period the year before. Per-share earnings rose 111% to $0.78. The company said its revenue would be approximately $37.5 billion in the upcoming quarterly report. Investors are not so worried about whether Nvidia will hit that number. The question is, in the face of what could be an AI world that needs less processing power, can Nvidia revenue continue to grow in high double digits?
The DeepSeek-V3 and DeepSeek-R1 AI models may be as powerful as OpenAI’s latest ChatGPT release. The latest OpenAI release is considered the industry standard. (Some experts would argue that Google’s Gemini and products from Elon Musk’s xAI belong in that conversation.)
The staggering claim about DeepSeek is that it cost less than $6 million to train the V3 model. It cost OpenAI over $100 million to train the latest model of ChatGPT.
The issue for Nvidia is whether AI will need huge computing power in the future. The DeepSeek product would indicate the answer is no. A total of $6 million is not enough to cover the cost of Nvidia chips needed to create DeepSeek’s release. This low DeepSeek investment could be the driver for other advances in AI applications. Cheaper hardware solutions undercut demand for expensive Nvidia processors.
Given the amount of testing that experts will do of DeepSeek’s claims, it will not take long to confirm them. Every major AI company in the world is analyzing facts about the Chinese AI product. If their claim about the costs to create DeepSeek’s product is true, Huang’s net worth will fall further.
Prediction: Meta Platforms Will Be Worth More Than Nvidia in 2028
Thank you for reading! Have some feedback for us?
Contact the 24/7 Wall St. editorial team.
Latest from 24/7
Our expert who first called NVIDIA in 2009 is predicting 2025 will see a historic AI breakthrough.
You can follow him investing $500,000 of his own money on our top AI stocks for free.