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.

Nvidia, the linchpin of the AI boom, led the collapse, with shares plummeting nearly 17%. This marked a record single-day loss in market capitalization for a Wall Street stock.

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.