LONDON/SINGAPORE — Investors hammered technology stocks on Monday, sending the likes of Nvidia and Oracle plummeting, as the emergence of a low-cost Chinese artificial intelligence model cast doubts on Western companies’ dominance in this sector.
Startup DeepSeek last week launched a free assistant it says uses less data at a fraction of the cost of incumbent players’ models, possibly marking a turning point in the level of investment needed for AI.
Futures on the Nasdaq 100 slid almost 4%, suggesting the index could see its biggest daily slide since September 2022 later on Monday, if those losses are sustained.
Those on the S&P 500 dropped 2%. Shares in AI chipmaker Nvidia fell more than 11%, rival Oracle dropped 8.5% and AI data analytics company Palantir lost 6.5% in pre-market trading.
DeepSeek, which by Monday had overtaken U.S. rival ChatGPT in terms of downloads on the Apple Store, offers the prospect of a viable, cheaper AI alternative which has raised questions about the sustainability of the level of spending and investment on AI by Western companies, including Apple and Microsoft.
From Tokyo to Amsterdam, shares in AI players tumbled.
“We still don’t know the details and nothing has been 100% confirmed in regards to the claims, but if there truly has been a breakthrough in the cost to train models from $100 million+ to this alleged $6 million number this is actually very positive for productivity and AI end users as cost is obviously much lower meaning lower cost of access,” Jon Withaar, a senior portfolio manager at Pictet Asset Management, said.
The hype around AI has powered a huge inflow of capital into the equity markets in the last 18 months in particular, as investors have bought into the technology, inflating company valuations and sending stock markets to record highs.
Little is known about the small Hangzhou startup behind DeepSeek. Its researchers wrote in a paper last month that the DeepSeek-V3 model, launched on Jan. 10, used Nvidia’s H800 chips for training, spending less than $6 million – the figure referenced by Pictet’s Withaar.
H800 chips are not top-of-the-line. Initially developed as a reduced-capability product to get around restrictions on sales to China, they were subsequently banned by U.S. sanctions.
‘Sputnik moment’
Marc Andreessen, the Silicon Valley venture capitalist, said in a post on X on Sunday that DeepSeek’s R1 model was AI’s “Sputnik moment,” referencing the former Soviet Union’s launch of a satellite that marked the start of the space race in the late 1950s.
“Deepseek R1 is one of the most amazing and impressive breakthroughs I’ve ever seen — and as open source, a profound gift to the world,” he said in a separate post.
In Europe, ASML which counts Taiwan’s TSMC, Intel and Samsung as its customers, dropped almost 7.5%, while Siemens Energy lost nearly 18%. In Japan, startup investor SoftBank Group slid more than 8%. Last week it announced a $19 billion commitment to fund Stargate, a data-center joint venture with OpenAI.
Given the volatility, investors sought out safe-havens such as U.S. Treasuries, which pushed 10-year yields down nearly 10 basis points to 4.52%, while low-yielding currencies like the Japanese yen and the Swiss franc soared against the dollar.
Big Tech has ramped up spending on developing AI capabilities and optimism over the possible returns has driven stock valuations sky-high.
Nvidia alone has risen by over 200% in about 18 months and trades at 56 times the value of its earnings, compared with a 53% rise in the Nasdaq .IXIC, which trades at a multiple of 16 to the value of its constituents’ earnings, according to LSEG data.
Nick Ferres, chief investment officer at Vantage Point Asset Management in Singapore said the market was questioning the capex spend of the major tech companies.
Masahiro Ichikawa, chief market strategist at Sumitomo Mitsui DS Asset Management said: “The idea that the most cutting-edge technologies in America, like Nvidia and ChatGPT, are the most superior globally, there’s concern that this perspective might start to change.”
“I think it might be a bit premature,” Ichikawa said.
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