Nasdaq slumps on Chinese AI upstart, Nvidia loses some $600bn in value

Nvidia lost nearly $600 billion in market capitalization on Monday, marking the largest single-day loss for any U.S. company in history. The company’s stock price fell 17% to close at $118.58, its worst performance since March 16, 2020.

The decline followed Nvidia’s brief status as the most valuable publicly traded company, surpassing Apple. The stock’s drop contributed to a 3.1% decline in the tech-heavy Nasdaq index.

The sell-off was attributed to rising competition from Chinese artificial intelligence lab DeepSeek. The company recently launched a free, open-source large language model using Nvidia’s H800 chips, which are less advanced but significantly cost-effective.

Nvidia’s GPUs dominate the U.S. market for AI data center chips, with major clients such as Alphabet, Meta, and Amazon heavily investing in its processors.

Cantor analysts reported Monday that DeepSeek’s new model has raised concerns about the potential impact on compute demand and spending on GPUs. This development has fueled fears of a peak in GPU spending.