DeepSeek’s threat to Nvidia’s earnings may not be so serious, Jim Cramer says

CNBC’s Jim Cramer on Friday told investors DeepSeek might not pose as serious a threat to Nvidia‘s sales as many investors feared this week, saying the Chinese artificial intelligence startup may not have told Wall Street the full story about its large language model.

“Is DeepSeek an alternate universe that bodes terribly for Nvidia’s pricing down the road? Hey, anything’s possible,” he said. “But if you had to design the most punitive way to bring down the price of this great stock, you’d invent something like DeepSeek.”

Earlier this week, investors were stunned to find out DeepSeek developed an AI model that it said cost $6 million to make — significantly less than what its peers spend on such programs. The company also claimed that the model could outperform that of industry favorite OpenAI. Wall Street concluded Big Tech may not need to spend as much money on highly-advanced chips from Nvidia, which until now seemed like the only option for companies looking to dominate in the AI world. Worries of lower earnings sent Nvidia shares plummeting, with the stock losing nearly $600 billion in one session, the largest single-day drop in market history.

Cramer conceded that investors’ response is logical if DeepSeek’s model actually cost so little to make, forcing Nvidia to bring down prices. But he said there’s a possibility that DeepSeek spent more on its program than investors believe, referencing a new report from SemiAnalysis, a semiconductor research and consulting firm. SemiAnalysis suggested the way DeepSeek framed the development of the new model is misleading, saying the company could have actually spent more than $500 million.

Cramer was also skeptical that executives at tech giants like Meta, Tesla and Oracle would have invested so much money in Nvidia without performing proper due diligence. DeepSeek wasn’t a secret, he continued, it just received a lot of attention this week.

“I think the SemiAnalysis piece is spot on,” he said. “It may just be one more long knife aimed at Nvidia, and nothing more.”

Nvidia declined to comment. DeepSeek did not immediately respond to request for comment.

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Disclaimer The CNBC Investing Club Charitable Trust holds shares of Nvidia and Meta.