The recent AI advances by Chinese upstart DeepSeek could be the beginning of a potential nightmare scenario that Nvidia Corp. Chief Executive Jensen Huang has been worrying about since the chip maker’s meteoric rise.

Nvidia ( NVDA) CEO Jensen Huang’s net worth plunged $18 billion Monday as the chipmaker’s stock continues to free fall. Huang was worth $106.3 billion as of Monday morning, down nearly 15%, according to Forbes Real-Time Billionaires list. Huang has an approximately 3% stake in Nvidia.

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.

The market reaction proved particularly severe for Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA), with shares plummeting and erasing half a trillion in market cap at the time of this writing. To put this staggering figure in perspective,

Social media exploded in a celebration after the news that a Chinese start-up had made an artificial intelligence tool that was more efficient than any in the United States.

Amy Hood's steady, simple response to the upheaval caused by news of a low-cost, competitive AI rival offers a model for how company leaders can respond to tectonic industry shifts.