“What a collapse! What a miss!”—No, I am not talking about the English cricket team.
I am referring to the stunning drop in the value of BIG TECH stocks last week.
Since the launch of ChatGPT—the groundbreaking artificial intelligence tool—companies based in the United States appeared to have had a significant head start in developing the most transformative technology of this generation. This advantage was further reinforced at the start of the year when a new and radical U.S. government announced its ambitious intent to invest billions of dollars in the race for AI supremacy.
Did they imagine this as the dawn of a new kind of space race?
At the beginning of last week, Nvidia was the most valuable company in the world. So how, then, could it lose $593 billion in a single day? This event triggered a dramatic collapse, wiping nearly $1 trillion from the value of major U.S. stocks.
This raises many questions—only some of which are outlined here:
Who at Nvidia, OpenAI, etc., was closely monitoring the external market environment for such a severe threat?
How many highly paid executives and market analysts completely overlooked DeepSeek?
Was this a black swan event or, in truth, a grey rhino event?
Who in your company is trained to distinguish between black swan and grey rhino events—and take action to mitigate the inherent risks?
Was the entire U.S. tech and investment community so fixated on their own bull market that they failed to foresee an external threat emerging outside the U.S.?
How did the entire U.S. investment community miss such a significant risk?
Were the founders of Stargate even aware of DeepSeek’s launch? Was DeepSeek on their intelligence radar at all?
Who is responsible (and sufficiently paranoid) about monitoring global AI developments—particularly in Asia, China, and Japan?
Beware the mice.
For decades, senior management at large, innovative, and highly valuable companies have challenged the Market Intelligence (MI) and Competitive Intelligence (CI) professions to justify their worth. The events of yesterday could well serve as a case study demonstrating the critical value of investing in MI/CI.
For over 35 years, Fletcher has provided bespoke market intelligence services to help mitigate such risks for both large and innovative companies.
For assistance in establishing a global market intelligence radar, along with additional consultancy and support, please contact Gordon Donkin in the UK or connect with your dedicated Fletcher Advisor & Consultant.
(44 ) 7711 056661
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