Wall Street was rocked last Monday after Chinese artificial intelligence lab DeepSeek unveiled a breakthrough in AI, surpassing models from OpenAI, Meta, and Anthropic—a direct challenge to Silicon Valley’s dominance. The revelation sent shockwaves through the stock market, wiping out $589 billion in Nvidia’s market cap, marking the largest single-day loss in U.S. history. Broadcom plunged 19%, Qualcomm tumbled 16%, and Constellation Energy dropped 20%, as investors questioned whether power-hungry AI models were still the future.
DeepSeek’s R1 model reportedly outperformed its American rivals at a fraction of the cost, despite China facing severe U.S. chip restrictions. The lab’s latest model, V3, was trained for just $5.6 million, compared to the hundreds of millions or even billions spent by American AI giants—a stunning achievement given China’s limited access to Nvidia’s H100 chips.
In response to the AI shockwave, the Biden administration is reportedly reviewing its China tech policies, while President Donald Trump announced a $500 billion AI infrastructure plan with Oracle, OpenAI, and SoftBank to ensure American leadership in AI.
Meanwhile, nuclear energy stocks staged a remarkable comeback as investors doubled down on small modular reactors (SMRs) to meet growing AI-driven power demand. NuScale Power surged 45.7% YTD, Oklo Inc. skyrocketed 105.6%, and Nano Nuclear Energy gained over 1,000% since its IPO. Despite DeepSeek’s energy-efficient AI models, Wall Street remains bullish on nuclear energy, with analysts predicting a 15% annual growth in data center electricity consumption through 2030.
