World’s richest people lose $108 billion after DeepSeek selloff
Billionaires whose fortunes are linked to artificial intelligence were the biggest losers: Huang saw his fortune fall $20.1 billion, a 20% drop, while Oracle Corp. co-founder Larry Ellison’s $22.6 billion loss was larger in absolute terms, but represented just 12% of his fortune, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Dell Inc.’s Michael Dell lost $13 billion, and Binance Holdings Ltd. co-founder Changpeng “CZ” Zhao shaved $12.1 billion.
Tech-sector titans as a group saw $94 billion of wealth evaporate — roughly 85% of the Bloomberg index’s total decline. The Nasdaq Composite Index fell 3.1%, and the S&P 500 dropped 1.5%.
Hangzhou-based DeepSeek has been developing AI models since 2023, but the company first came onto the radar of many Western investors this weekend as its free DeepSeek R1 chatbot app topped download charts worldwide. So many new users piled in that DeepSeek struggled to keep the app online, suffering outages and forcing it to restrict signups to users with Chinese phone numbers.
DeepSeek’s dark-horse entry into the AI race, which it says cost just $5.6 million to develop, is a challenge to Silicon Valley’s narrative that massive capital spending is essential to developing the strongest models. That delivered a serious blow to billionaires whose fortunes are tied to the Western AI supply chain that’s been the equities market’s biggest driver over the past two years.
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