The tech giants are keeping capital spending plans in line as DeepSeek raises questions about future computing needs.
Nvidia stumbled on Wednesday, falling 5% after shares rebounded from the 200-day moving average on Tuesday. Earnings from a key customer, Microsoft, on Wednesday and the spending outlook for the software giant may be key to Nvidia.
Nvidia shares' 9% recovery Tuesday was the second-best day in terms of market cap added for any company ever—but the company faced another selloff Wednesday.
Nvidia is the gold standard and leading provider of the graphics processing units (GPUs) used to train and run AI systems. The company is believed to control as much as 98% of the data center GPU market, according to semiconductor analyst firm TechInsights. If AI models can be trained on lower-cost, inferior chips, Nvidia has a lot to lose.
Shares of Nvidia ( NVDA -5.29%) were sinking Wednesday. The company's stock fell 6.2% as of 2:20 p.m. ET, but lost as much as 6.9% earlier in the day. The move comes as the S&P 500 ( ^GSPC -0.39%) and Nasdaq Composite ( ^IXIC -0.54%) lost 0.8% and 1.1%, respectively.
In its own research, DeepSeek said it had “distilled” models from its R1 system based on other open-source systems. Unlike OpenAI’s closed systems, some models such as Meta’s Llama are open-source and freely available for use.
The tech giant’s revenue was up 12 percent to $69.6 billion, but investors are showing their nerves after a long boom for tech stocks.
Despite the negative financial impact, Nvidia praised DeepSeek’s breakthrough. “DeepSeek is an excellent A.I. advancement and a perfect example of test time scaling,” a company spokesperson told Observer in a statement.
In what marks the largest single-day drop in stock market history, Nvidia's valuation has been hit by China's answer to ChatGPT.
Many top exchange-traded funds (ETFs) that have been outperforming the S&P 500 in recent years all have a common theme, which is that their top three holdings usually include at least one of the following tech stocks: Nvidia, Microsoft, or Apple.
Nvidia has been the rock of the graphics card industry for years, but its position in the market has never felt more cemented in place than now. AMD has always provided Nvidia with feisty Radeon competition,