China’s emerging artificial intelligence company DeepSeek became the most downloaded app on Apple’s App Store in the US on Monday, triggering concerns about the high valuation of artificial intelligence stocks on Wall Street.
Nvidia stock closed down 16.97 percent on Monday, wiping out nearly $590 billion in market value, setting a new record for the largest single-day market value loss in U.S. stock history.
In response to a media interview on Monday, Nvidia said that DeepSeek’s new (R1) model is an excellent AI advance.
At the same time, on January 27, the cryptocurrency market plunged, Bitcoin once fell below $98,000, fell more than 6% in 24 hours. Other currencies fell even more, Ethereum fell more than 8% and fell below $3,100, Solana, Dogecoin fell more than 11%. TRUMP’s personal meme coin, Trump Coin, fell more than 20% during the session, shrinking its market value to $5.1 billion.
However, to the surprise of precious metals investors, gold and silver have been remarkably cool in this market sell-off and have not seen a rise in safe-haven demand. The February gold futures contract on the New York Mercantile Exchange fell $40.70 on Monday to close at $2,738.70 an ounce. The March silver contract was down 0.815 cents at $30.37.
Heraeus precious metals analysts said on Monday that the sell-off in technology stocks triggered by DeepSeek’s R1 large language model and market concerns about the cost of competing models for U.S. companies could provide investors with opportunities to buy precious metals.
Going forward, it “remains to be seen” whether DeepSeek can find a way to bypass U.S. export controls on Nvidia and other GPU makers. Ultimately, DeepSeek may not be seen as the “competitive threat” needed to continue building a broader AI infrastructure.
Analysts believe that this wave of technology stock rout led by Nvidia may come from the bubble accumulated by the rally of the past two years. As risk aversion has not yet emerged in precious metals markets, gold and silver prices have not risen significantly. Analysts at Heraeus point out that near-term investor interest in gold seems to depend on a rise in the price of gold.
Since Trump was sworn in just a week ago, the market still has high hopes for the US economy and the stock market, leading to the temporary failure of precious metals to gain more momentum.
At the same time, the sell-off in gold may be related to liquidity problems caused by the stock market slump. The Federal Reserve’s FOMC meeting on Tuesday and Wednesday is widely expected to leave interest rates unchanged.
Established in July 2023, DeepSeek is an innovative technology company registered in Hangzhou, focusing on the development of advanced Large language models (LLM) and related technologies.c
