All this proves is that there exist no non-NVIDIA solutions to the hottest new thing.
You're exactly right.
People in the US treat the market like the Oracle of Delphi. It's really just a bunch of people who don't have a grasp on things like AI or the tech industry at large placing wagers on who's gonna make the most money in those fields.
And you can apply that to most fields that publicly-traded companies operate in.
That's most likely exactly what's going on.
Markets aren't about intrinsic values, they're about predicting what everyone else is going to do. Couple that with the fact that credit is shackled to confidence, and so much of market valuations are based on available credit. One stiff breeze is all it takes to shake confidence, collapse credit, and spark a run on the market.
But roughly, I suspect the main thing is "enough people thought NVDA was the only supplier for AI chips, and now they realize there's at least one other" that it slipped.
I think it makes more sense if someone thinks "Gen AI is just NVIDIA - and if china has Gen AI, then they must have their own NVIDIA" so they sell.
But it makes the most sense if someone thinks "Headlines link US lead in Gen AI and NVIDIA, bad headlines for Gen AI must mean bad news for NVIDIA".
And the theoretically ultimate market analysis guru probably thinks "Everyone is wrong about Gen AI and NVIDIA being intimately linked, but that will make them sell regarding this news, so I must also sell and buy back at bottom"