The furore that erupted in January around the China-developed DeepSeek R1 AI model saw leading technology and energy stocks tumble sharply. But what might all this mean for future AI research and adoption? A much wider reassessment of the global shape of the market, particularly the potential and cost of generative AI (GenAI), is likely to rumble throughout 2025.
The money men have been seriously spooked. That is not the whole story, but you must still start there. Because one of the questions set to come out of the debate concerns where their investments may now go.
At the tumble’s January low-point, Nvidia, the largest producer of AI GPUs, saw its share price fall by 17%, wiping nearly $600bn off its valuation. The other members of tech’s ‘Magnificent Seven’ – Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Alphabet, Meta, and Tesla – also fell, but not as sharply.
In the energy sector, two leading generators supplying the hyperscale data centre market, Vistra and Constellation Energy, were off respectively...