Uranium price falls as DeepSeek disrupts tech

me-metals: Chinese artificial intelligence company DeepSeek is making a splash in the tech world with downloads surpassing ChatGPT’s, pushing major tech stocks down, while prices of uranium – which could help power the AI revolution – declined 5% Monday night.

According to me-metals cited from mining.com, Chinese artificial intelligence company DeepSeek is making a splash in the tech world with downloads surpassing ChatGPT’s, pushing major tech stocks down, while prices of uranium – which could help power the AI revolution – declined 5% Monday night.

The AI chatbot DeepSeek, founded by tech entrepreneur Liang Wenfeng, has rocketed to the top of iPhone’s app downloads list, ahead of ChatGPT, Threads and Google. The chatbot has achieved that even though its AI model, known as R1, was made with leaner resources than other comparable programs. Top AI firms reportedly train their models with supercomputers using as many as 16,000 integrated circuits, while DeepSeek uses only around 2,000 chips from Nvidia’s (NASDAQ: NVDA) H800 series.

Tech stocks declined sharply on Monday, with AI company Nvidia down 16%, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing (NYSE: TSM) falling by 11% and Oracle (NYSE: ORCL) down by 15%. The stock drops amount to a $1.6 trillion drop on Wall Street after DeepSeek’s release, according to The Australian. Stocks from all three companies gained by almost 3% Tuesday.

Spot uranium downAlongside those movements, the spot price of uranium, regarded as key to the development of power-intensive AI as a fuel for nuclear power, fell on Monday night. The price was down by $3.90 per lb. uranium oxide (U3O8) to $67.30 per lb. on Tuesday, for a weekly decline of $6.55 per pound.

There were 21 market transactions representing 1.8 million lb. of spot U3O8 in total over the last week, BMO Capital Markets analyst George Heppel said on Tuesday citing data from nuclear industry research company UxC. But he added that additional demand interest is emerging in uranium, including from power utilities for prices under $70 per pound.

“Despite a negative shift in AI sentiment yesterday, our reactor demand outlook remains unchanged out through 2030, underpinned by significant growth from ongoing reactor builds in China,” Heppel said in a note. “Improving economics for the carry trade should provide upward support at this level.”

The lower uranium price may be supporting major uranium players, which gained on Tuesday. Cameco (TSX: CCO) was up 1.2% to C$69.13 apiece, Kazatomprom (LSE: KAP) rose 1.6% to $37.60 each in London, and NexGen Energy (TSX: NXE) gained 4.6% to C$9.15.

source: mining.com

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