As chipmaker stocks continue to take a beating, Jensen Huang, Nvidia's chief executive, finds himself falling down the rich list.
The Nvidia boss (on paper) lost nearly $12 billion on Thursday, with his net worth falling 6.9% to an estimated $161.7 billion.
That sees the CEO and big-time AI cheerleader move down two places on Forbes' Real-Time Billionaires list, down to number nine on the list of "the world's richest".
Huang was leapfrogged by Microsoft's Steve Ballmer (whose wealth also dropped on Thursday, just more slowly) whose wealth is estimated at $166 billion, and legendary value investor and infamously tech-sceptic Warren Buffett, who is claimed to be worth $165 billion.
Chipmakers plummet on Thursday
It's a hard day to be in hardware, with chipmakers and memory stocks including Micron, AMD, Intel, SanDisk, TSM, Qualcomm and Marvell all falling for a second straight day following Tuesday's midterms.
Earnings reports were the market's focus, but the implications of midterm results are also not far away from attention either, given the strong anti-datacenter campaigning among key Democrats who this week found themselves on the winning side of the ballots.
Democrats won control of the House and Senate with pledges to tighten restrictions on data centers.
Nvidia, the most investor-backed of all chip stocks in recent years, saw its shares down again on Thursday, losing another 9% to $181.60, and taking the negative five-day streak to a 12.5% decline.
A month ago, Nvidia had been on pace to become the first company to reach a $6 trillion market cap before investor doubts over returns on AI spending and weak earnings from major tech companies dragged the stock down. At this stage, it has lost some 24% in that time.
In its most recent quarter, Nvidia reported $89 billion in data center revenue, up 117% year over year and about 92% of total revenue.
All eyes will be on Nvidia's third-quarter earnings, slated for 17 November.
