Despite the market's reaction, analysts at Cantor remain optimistic about Nvidia's prospects, suggesting that advancements in AI will drive increased demand for compute power. Nvidia's stock had previously surged 239% in 2023 and 171% the prior year, contributing to market sensitivity over potential spending pullbacks. The excitement around DeepSeek's model, which surpassed OpenAI's ChatGPT as the most-downloaded free app on Apple's App Store, comes amid U.S. export restrictions on chips to China. Nvidia is now the third most-valuable public company, trailing Apple and Microsoft, while CEO Jensen Huang's net worth dropped by approximately $21 billion, placing him 17th on Forbes' richest-person list.
Key takeaways:
- Nvidia experienced a historic market cap loss of nearly $600 billion, driven by competition concerns from Chinese AI lab DeepSeek.
- DeepSeek's new open-source AI model, built with Nvidia's H800 chips, has intensified fears of reduced demand for Nvidia's GPUs.
- The selloff affected other tech companies, with Broadcom losing $200 billion in market cap and data center companies like Dell and Oracle also seeing significant declines.
- Despite the market reaction, analysts believe AI advancements will increase demand for compute power, suggesting Nvidia's long-term prospects remain strong.