Nvidia just went through one of the most turbulent weeks in its stock market history. In a single trading session, the chip giant lost $465 billion in market value, an all-time record never before reached by any company in the world. The direct cause: the sudden emergence of DeepSeek, a Chinese startup that has shaken the certainties of an entire industry.
DeepSeek: The Shock From Hangzhou
DeepSeek is a startup based in Hangzhou, in eastern China, a city known for its high concentration of tech companies. What stunned the markets was its development cost: about $5.6 million, or roughly one-hundredth of what major U.S. companies spend on artificial intelligence R&D.
The model was built with a fraction of the chips used by its Western competitors. That reality directly challenged one of the industry’s core beliefs: owning the best chips no longer guarantees AI supremacy.
For investors, the message was brutal. If high-performing AI can be developed at such a low cost, the billions that U.S. Big Tech companies have sunk into it suddenly lose their justification. Stock valuations, inflated by years of a computing-power narrative, came under immediate pressure.
A Historic Drop for Nvidia Stock
Nvidia shares plunged 13% on the Nasdaq during this historic session. Finance News Nvidia news: stock plunge, antitrust probe and AI dominance. These three threads sum up the storm the company is going through. For the record, the previous one-day record for lost market value belonged to Meta/Facebook, which wiped out $251 billion in a single session in early 2022, as its metaverse project collapsed.
Other U.S. tech stocks also suffered. Meta lost 1.89%, Microsoft 4.36%, Amazon 3.32% and Alphabet 3.36%. The Nasdaq as a whole fell 3.20% and the S&P 500 1.77%, while the Dow Jones held its losses to 0.21%.
Bond markets moved in mirror image as investors flocked to safe-haven assets. The yield on the 10-year U.S. Treasury fell to 4.53%, from 4.62% the day before.
The Shockwave in European and Asian Markets
Europe was not spared. Every major exchange fell: Amsterdam lost 1.33%, Frankfurt 0.71%, Paris 0.31% and London 0.07%. But the pain was sharpest among semiconductor and AI infrastructure stocks.
- ASML: -8.65%
- ASM International: -8.49%
- BE Semiconductor: -6.99%
- Soitec: -4.37%
- Infineon: -3.22%
Schneider Electric fell 9.22% and Legrand 5.86%. But it was Siemens Energy that suffered the sharpest correction, with a drop of more than 20%, showing how the entire AI infrastructure chain (energy, cables, electrical equipment) got caught up in the doubt.
In Japan, Advantest (an Nvidia supplier) lost 8.61%, Fujikura 8% and SoftBank 6.09%. All of these companies are exposed, directly or indirectly, to demand for AI chips and data center equipment.
Antitrust Probe: Mounting Regulatory Pressure
Nvidia’s stock market troubles go beyond the DeepSeek shock. The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) has opened an antitrust investigation into the company, following allegations from competitors who believe Nvidia may have abused its dominant position in the AI chip market.
Even before the investigation was officially announced, the stock had already fallen 6.7% in a single New York session, leaving it 22% below its June record. The DOJ announcement added to the pressure: the shares lost another 2.3% in Frankfurt right after.
In France, the Autorité de la concurrence, the country’s competition watchdog, is also conducting a separate investigation into Nvidia’s alleged anticompetitive practices. The case is nearing its end, but a conclusion does not automatically mean penalties: investigators must first decide whether to issue a statement of objections, before any decision by the authority’s board.
Nvidia’s AI Dominance: A Model Under Strain
Finance News Nvidia news: stock plunge, antitrust probe and AI dominance. Behind these three dimensions lies a fundamental question: how much longer can Nvidia remain the indispensable player in AI?
Nvidia is still the world’s largest company by market capitalization. Its GPUs power the data centers of the biggest tech companies on the planet, and its technological lead remains real. But its business model rested on a premise (computing power as the decisive advantage) that DeepSeek has started to crack.
During a previous bout of volatility, AMD fell 7.8%, Intel 8.8%, Broadcom 6.2% and Qualcomm 6.9%, dragged down in Nvidia’s wake. This shows that the entire semiconductor ecosystem is exposed every time the AI narrative is called into question.
The week of the Nasdaq’s drop coincided with earnings reports from Microsoft, Meta, Tesla and Apple, a calendar that further heightened market jitters about AI spending and its expected return on investment.
Amid this turbulence, we recommend that investors not mistake short-term volatility for a structural trend: Nvidia retains strong positions, but competition is widening, and the sector is entering a phase of deep reassessment of its fundamentals.
