Several notable billionaires experienced massive hits to their fortunes Monday as the Chinese generative artificial intelligence startup DeepSeek upended the U.S. stock market, hitting the American AI leader Nvidia the hardest.

The world’s 500 richest people, led by Nvidia co-founder Jensen Huang, lost a combined $US108 billion ($172 billion) on Monday as a tech-led selloff tied to Chinese AI developer DeepSeek sent major indices plunging.

US chip-maker Nvidia led a rout in tech stocks on Monday after the emergence of a low-cost Chinese generative AI model that could threaten US dominance in the fast-growing industry. The chatbot developed by DeepSeek,

Apple emerges as a “relative winner” as DeepSeek shifted investor narratives on AI, wrote Morgan Stanley analysts led by Brian Nowak in a Tuesday note to clients, explaining Apple’s “AI ambitions are far more contained” than the other “magnificent seven” American tech leaders.