The Frontier · January 27, 2025
DeepSeek Day
A freely downloadable Chinese model, trained under US chip export controls, briefly topped the App Store and triggered the largest single-day market-cap loss in US history. The export-control strategy went on trial in one trading session.
−16.97%
Nvidia (NVDA) closing price change on Monday, January 27, 2025 — the day after DeepSeek-R1 went viral.
Single-day market value erased — in dollars
Nvidia · Jan 27, 2025~$589B
Largest one-day market-cap loss for any company in US history. Widely rounded to "$600B" in the press.
Nvidia · prior record (Sep 3, 2024)~$279B
The previous record — also Nvidia's. Jan 27 was nearly double it.
Nasdaq · total erased that day~$1 trillion
Roughly $1T wiped across the index as the AI-hardware trade unwound. Bars scaled to $1T.
Meanwhile, on the App Store
#1
DeepSeek's free assistant app reached #1 on the US Apple App Store, above every American chatbot — the consumer-facing other half of the same day's shock.
Why it landed so hard
The thesis underwriting Nvidia's valuation was that frontier AI required ever-larger compute that export controls could gate. A capable, openly downloadable Chinese model implied the moat might be thinner than priced — and the market repriced it in hours.
SOURCE · NEURON MAKERS, CH. 40 — underlying: NVDA closing change −16.97% and ~$589B one-day loss (largest in US history; prior record ~$279B, Sep 3 2024); ~$1T erased across the Nasdaq; DeepSeek app #1 on US App Store, Jan 27 2025.
Note: $589B is the precise figure; press reports often round to "$600B." Figures shown as reported.