• Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang's net worth fell by about $20 billion on Monday.
• Huang lost nearly 20% of his net worth after Chinese AI startup DeepSeek triggered a tech sell-off.
• DeepSeek is an "excellent AI advancement," Nvidia told Business Insider.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang lost nearly 20% of his net worth after Chinese AI upstart DeepSeek sparked a sell-off in AI-related stocks on Monday.

Huang's net worth fell from $121 billion to around $100 billion, per the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

Nvidia shares plunged by nearly 17% when markets closed on Monday, shedding nearly $600 billion in market value. The shares have since gone up by 1.51% in after-hour trading.

Huang wasn't the only tech billionaire who saw his net worth decline.

Oracle co-founder and CTO Larry Ellison lost $22.6 billion, or 12% of his net worth, per Bloomberg. The outlet said that the world's 500 richest people lost a combined $108 billion on Monday.

When approached for comment, a spokesperson for Nvidia told Business Insider that DeepSeek is an "excellent AI advancement" and a "perfect example" of test-time scaling.

Test-time scaling refers to techniques that can improve a model's performance by adjusting how it processes information, instead of retraining it on more data.

"DeepSeek's work illustrates how new models can be created using that technique, leveraging widely-available models and compute that is fully export control compliant," the spokesperson said, adding that the company's products would still be needed to run AI models.

"Inference requires significant numbers of Nvidia GPUs and high-performance networking," the spokesperson continued.

DeepSeek spooked investors this week after its free chatbot app hit the top spot on Apple's US App Store's ranking on Monday. The startup's high-performing but relatively cheaper models have raised concerns that demand for AI hardware like Nvidia's chips may drop.

On Monday, President Donald Trump told GOP lawmakers at their annual policy retreat that DeepSeek's cheaper models are both a "positive" and a "wake-up call" for American tech companies.

"That's good, because you don't have to spend as much money. I view that as a positive, as an asset," Trump said.

"The release of DeepSeek, AI from a Chinese company, should be a wake-up call for our industries that we need to be laser-focused on competing to win," he added.

Last week, Trump announced Stargate, a new AI joint venture between OpenAI, SoftBank, Oracle and Emirati investor, MGX. Trump said Stargate will invest up to $500 billion on AI infrastructure over the next four years.