By Shashwat Chauhan

January 28, 2025 – 8:54 AM PST

(Reuters) – Short sellers of artificial intelligence-related stocks raked in bumper profits after the smashing debut of low-cost AI models from China’s DeepSeek spooked Wall Street, with bets against Nvidia yielding record profits totaling more than $6 billion.

Traders betting against AI-darling Nvidia (NVDA.O) earned profits of about $6.6 billion – the biggest single-day move ever on the stock – according to data analytics firm Ortex.

Nvidia saw $593 billion wiped off its market value on Monday, in the biggest single-session loss ever for any company, after Chinese startup DeepSeek launched AI models that it said are at par or better than industry-leading models in the United States, at a fraction of the cost.

Short sellers of chipmaker Broadcom (AVGO.O) also earned more than $2 billion in profits.

Other AI-related stocks, such as server-maker Super Micro (SMCI.O), data-center operator Equinix (EQIX.O) and energy provider Vistra (VST.N), also witnessed heavy losses on Monday, giving investors betting against these firms combined profits of more than $900 million, according to Ortex.

^{Reporting by Shashwat Chauhan in Bengaluru; Editing by Pooja Desai}