The richest 500 people in the world collectively lost $108 billion due to a massive tech selloff triggered by Chinese AI developer DeepSeek. Nvidia co-founder Jensen Huang experienced a significant fortune drain, losing $20.1 billion, which is a 20% drop. Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison faced a loss of $22.6 billion, about 12% of his wealth. Other notable losses include Dell’s Michael Dell, who lost $13 billion, and Binance’s Changpeng Zhao, who saw $12.1 billion vanish.
This selloff resulted from DeepSeek’s unexpected rise with its free DeepSeek R1 chatbot. The app topped download charts worldwide over the weekend, leading to major stock market turbulence. DeepSeek’s model development cost was just $5.6 million, challenging Silicon Valley’s high capital spending narrative. With the Nasdaq Composite Index falling 3.1% and the S&P 500 dropping 1.5%, tech-sector billionaires tied to AI investments saw $94 billion, or 85% of the Bloomberg Billionaires Index’s total decline, evaporate.
At the same time, some other tech moguls like Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg ended up with gains, as did Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, who saw a slight increase in wealth.
