"The Black Swan" Author Warns Of Future Selloffs Worse Than DeepSeek Shock

Nassim Taleb, author of The Black Swan, warned that markets should brace for an even worse shock than the one that sent stocks tumbling after the release of DeepSeek's AI technology, Jason Ma reported for Fortune.

Taleb cautioned that history suggests first movers don’t always emerge as long-term winners. I Photo: Salzburg Global Flickr

Taleb, whose book explores unpredictable events with massive consequences, pointed to Nvidia’s record-breaking stock collapse as a sign of deeper market fragility. Nvidia’s 17% plunge erased $589 billion in market capitalization—the largest single-day loss for a U.S. company—and dragged the Nasdaq down by more than 3%.

The selloff followed revelations that DeepSeek had developed advanced AI at a fraction of the cost incurred by rivals like OpenAI and Google, raising doubts about the viability of the hundreds of billions of dollars being funneled into the sector.

“This is just the beginning,” Taleb told Bloomberg TV on Monday. “The beginning of people adjusting to reality.”

Since OpenAI launched ChatGPT in November 2022, igniting the current AI boom, Nvidia’s stock had soared more than 700% amid skyrocketing demand for its chips.

However, Taleb cautioned that history suggests first movers don’t always emerge as long-term winners, citing how Google’s search engine ultimately displaced AltaVista during the early internet boom.

When asked if another market downturn like Monday’s was possible, Taleb responded, “Or much bigger—two, three times bigger even. That’s absolutely in line with what you can expect.”

He also emphasized the vulnerability of wealth concentrated in a handful of stocks, particularly Nvidia, most of whose valuation gains have been recent.