DeepSeek fears wipe $2.5B from AI agent market cap

The AI agent market cap has plunged over $2.5 billion in the past 24 hours, dropping from $12.9 billion to just over $10.2 billion, according to data from cookie.fun.

CoinGecko data shows a similar decline in AI agents’ market cap, with the figure dropping to $10 billion, reflecting a 19% decrease over the same period.

This steep decline coincides with the emergence of DeepSeek, a Chinese LLM model that has been gaining traction with its fraction of the costs and higher benchmarks compared to models from OpenAI, Google, and Meta.

DeepSeek charges just 14 cents per million input tokens, significantly undercutting OpenAI’s GPT-4, which costs $15 per million input tokens.

The cost differential has prompted a reassessment of AI investments, affecting both crypto assets and tech stocks.

Major AI agents such as AIXBT have plunged 18.5%, ai16z framework has fallen 24%, Virtuals AI agent creation platform dropped 14%, and GRIFFAIN declined 25% in the past 24 hours.

Meanwhile, AI meme coin Fartcoin saw the sharpest drop, tumbling 31%, according to data from CoinGecko.

The broader AI crypto token market showed similar weakness, with Near Protocol down 10%, Internet Computer falling 7%, Render declining 14%, and Artificial Superintelligence Alliance dropping 10%.

The Nasdaq fell 3.6% on Monday, and Nvidia stock dropped nearly 20% to $118 by mid-morning.

Last week, Donald Trump announced that the US would become the global leader in AI and crypto, with $500 billion allocated to Project Stargate to support OpenAI and solidify American AI dominance.

However, the rise of DeepSeek, requiring fewer resources while outperforming more expensive systems, suggests that even substantial US investments may struggle to prevent further disruption.

DeepSeek has already overtaken ChatGPT as the top app on Apple’s App Store and surpassed OpenAI in US Google search interest over the past week.

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