Some of the world’s richest men suffered a multi-billion-pound hit to their wealth yesterday in a rout of global tech stocks.
The plunge came as a new Chinese chatbot sparked panic that the West could fall behind in the artificial intelligence (AI) arms race.
One of the biggest losers was Nvidia boss Jensen Huang after shares in the computer chips maker, a poster child for the AI revolution, suffered the biggest one-day drop in value of any company in history.
Huang, 61, saw more than £18billion wiped off his fortune as the value of his 3.8 per cent stake tumbled by close to 18 per cent.
Meanwhile, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, the world’s second-richest man, saw his wealth shrink by nearly £2billion after the online shopping site’s stock took a dip.
Others caught up included Larry Ellison, the co-founder of US software giant Oracle, who saw £16.5billion knocked off his net worth, and former Microsoft boss Steve Ballmer, who lost around £4.5billion through his 4 per cent stake in the tech firm.
Losses: Nvidia boss Jensen Huang (pictured) saw shares in the computer chips maker, a suffer the biggest one-day drop in value of any company in history
Global tech stocks went into meltdown yesterday after a Chinese start-up called DeepSeek, little known in the West, released a new version of its AI-powered chatbot which serves as a competitor to the likes of ChatGPT, developed by Open AI, and Google’s Gemini.
It claims its new chatbot performs just as well as those made by its rivals and that it managed to train the AI using far less computing power than its US competitors – and for a much lower cost than AI investment among the US giants.
The news sparked fears that Silicon Valley may not be able to maintain its dominance in the race to develop AI despite tens of billions of dollars of investment.
But despite the sell-off, Dan Ives, analyst at US wealth manager Wedbush, said it was overblown and could present a ‘buying opportunity’ for investors.
The launch of a Chinese-based AI chatbot has raised questions about whether efforts by US President Donald Trump and his predecessor Joe Biden to try and stop China from accessing American technology to maintain an edge in the AI race have backfired.
DeepSeek’s popularity has also sparked fears of Chinese censorship spreading to users outside the country.
Chinese-made apps and websites frequently censor information that may be critical of the country’s ruling communist party, with AI companies required to instil ‘socialist values’.
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This article was originally published by a www.dailymail.co.uk . Read the Original article here. .