Richest men lose billions in tech stock rout as Chinese chatbot sparks fears West could fall behind in AI arms race
Richest men lose billions in tech stock rout as Chinese chatbot sparks fears West could fall behind in AI arms race
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Some of the world’s richest men suffered a multi-billion-pound hit to their wealth yesterday in a rout of global tech stocks. The plunge came as a new Chinese chatbot sparked panic that the West could fall behind in the artificial intelligence (AI) arms race.
One of the biggest losers was Nvidia boss Jensen Huang after shares in the computer chips maker, a poster child for the AI revolution, suffered the biggest one-day drop in value of any company in history. Huang, 61, saw more than £18billion wiped off his fortune as the value of his 3.8 per cent stake tumbled by close to 18 per cent.
Meanwhile, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, the world’s second-richest man, saw his wealth shrink by nearly £2billion after the online shopping site’s stock took a dip. Others caught up included Larry Ellison, the co-founder of US software giant Oracle, who saw £16.5billion knocked off his net worth, and former Microsoft boss Steve Ballmer, who lost around £4.5billion through his 4 per cent stake in the tech firm.
Losses: Nvidia boss Jensen Huang (pictured) saw shares in the computer chips maker, a suffer the biggest one-day drop in value of any company in history. Global tech stocks went into meltdown yesterday after a Chinese start-up called DeepSeek, little known in the West, released a new version of its AI-powered chatbot which serves as a competitor to the likes of ChatGPT, developed by Open AI, and Google’s Gemini.
