The stock of the U.S. chip giant Nvidia plunged 16.97 percent on Monday, wiping out nearly 600 billion U.S. dollar in market value, with analysts attributing the decline to the rise of the Chinese AI startup DeepSeek.
The drop in Nvidia's stock marked the largest single-day market value loss of a company in U.S. history.
Nvidia's sharp decline sent shockwaves through the market, with the technology-heavy Nasdaq Composite dropping 612.47 points or 3.07 percent to close at 19,341.83.
Analysts cited the latest breakthrough by the Chinese AI startup DeepSeek as the core reason behind the U.S. stock market turbulence.
In late December, DeepSeek released the hybrid model DeepSeek-V3, whose evaluation scores in multiple tests have surpassed open-source models such as Llama-3.1-405B, and its performance is comparable to the world's top closed-source models GPT-4o and Claude-3.5-Sonnet. In addition, DeepSeek-V3 is more cost-effective.
On the opening day of the World Economic Forum (WEF) 2025 Annual Meeting, DeepSeek released its latest open-source model DeepSeek-R1, which has achieved an important technological breakthrough - using pure deep learning methods to allow AI to spontaneously emerge with reasoning capabilities.
In tasks such as mathematics, coding and natural language reasoning, the performance of this model is comparable to the leading models from heavyweights like OpenAI, according to DeepSeek.
Nvidia stock falls nearly 17 pct as Chinese AI startup DeepSeek grows
Thousands of demonstrators rallied in Italy and Greece on Saturday to protest against U.S. military intervention in Venezuela, with protesters in Rome, Milan and Athens condemning Washington's actions and calling for respect for Venezuelan sovereignty.
In Rome, more than 1,000 demonstrators marched toward the area near the U.S. Embassy, calling on Washington to immediately release Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and his wife.
Police blocked roads around the embassy to prevent protesters from approaching the building, but demonstrators continued to denounce U.S. actions.
"First of all, we oppose U.S. imperialist aggression. This kind of behavior is shameful. The U.S. is attacking a sovereign country, and as [U.S. President Donald] Trump himself has said, this is for oil interests," said protester Giovanni Barbera.
Saturday's rally marked the second large-scale protest in Rome this month against U.S. military operations in Venezuela, following an earlier one on on Jan 3.
Participants included members of multiple political parties, labor unions and social organizations. The protesters held banners reading "Stop imperialist interference" and "Free Maduro," urging the international community to respect Venezuela's sovereignty and the will of its people, and condemning the U.S. for violating international law.
"We are protesting the way the U.S. handles international politics. Since the events of January 3, we have seen violations of international law, and we are very concerned about how the global situation is developing," said protester Stefano De Angelis.
Organizers said solidarity rallies in support of Venezuela were held in 30 Italian cities on the same day.
Meanwhile, similar protests were also staged in Greece. About 200 people gathered outside the U.S. Embassy in Athens, voicing support for Venezuela and opposition to U.S. military actions.
"We oppose U.S. imperialism and its attack on Venezuela. At the same time, the U.S. is also threatening Cuba, Mexico and Greenland. We must stand up against this behavior," said Greek protester Argiro Sirmakezi.
Protesters rally in Italy, Greece against U.S. military operation in Venezuela
