Broadcom and Marvell shares have been hit recently. But Nvidia alone is responsible for about three quarters of the chip sector's lost market cap in the weeks since the DeepSeek news.

Many high-profile chip stocks got punished this earnings season, with Wall Street taking a more exacting approach to evaluating artificial-intelligence players.

But when you look at the carnage in the past six weeks since the DeepSeek developments rocked the technology sector, one company is largely responsible for the lost market value. That's NVIDIA, which is by far the biggest chip company to begin with.

Through Thursday's close, the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index had lost $1.04 trillion in market value since Jan. 27, when markets first began to reflect fears about DeepSeek and the possibility that future AI development could require a lot less expensive hardware than previously thought. But about three quarters of that decline, or $783 billion, corresponded to Nvidia, according to Dow Jones Market Data.

Shares of Nvidia have lagged the S&P 500 and the PHLX Semiconductor Index since the DeepSeek selloff began. Broadcom's stock has seen comparable losses and Marvell Technology's stock has seen even bigger ones, but they have smaller market values - especially in the case of Marvell - so they contribute less to the chip index's market-cap decline. Nvidia is valued at $2.76 trillion, compared with $914 billion for Broadcom and $61 billion for Marvell.

Within the "Magnificent Seven" grouping of large technology companies, only Tesla Motors's stock has performed worse than Nvidia's over this span.

Nvidia is also about $900 billion off its peak market capitalization achieved on Jan. 6.

While Nvidia has compelling growth opportunities ahead with its Blackwell offerings and is expected to share even more about its product pipeline at its annual GTC conference later this month, investors seem to be taking issue with various things in the company's financials. For one, the company isn't beating its guidance by the same magnitude that it did earlier in the AI cycle. And the transition to Blackwell is putting pressure on the company's gross margins.

Mizuho desk-based analyst Jordan Klein noted Friday that Broadcom may be seen as "the best of the bunch" in AI semiconductors right now. The company is no Nvidia, but because it's smaller than Nvidia, that creates "runway for much higher AI [revenue] expansion." Broadcom is also seeing good visibility and growing customer traction for its application-specific integrated circuits.

Read: Why Broadcom's earnings are clicking with investors after Nvidia's fell flat

That said, while Broadcom's stock was rewarded after the company's earnings last week, it hasn't done much better than Nvidia's since the DeepSeek news came out. Broadcom shares are down 20.3% while Nvidia shares are off 21%.

Non-AI chip plays have held up better than the S&P 500 and the PHLX Semiconductor Index over that span. While the S&P 500 is off 5.3% and the chip index is off 13.2%, shares of Analog Devices are up 4.4% and shares of NXP Semiconductors NV are up 4.3%.

Within the semiconductor sector, money may be rotating into makers of analog chips that have potentially interesting recovery narratives ahead. "We believe the analog recovery is imminent and that every analog company will feel it as sales from the analog companies have fallen roughly 30% from the peak," Citi Research analyst Christopher Danely wrote last month as he turned bullish on NXP shares in the wake of upbeat market commentary from Analog Devices' management.

There are still challenges in the automotive market, he noted, but trends in the industrial market are getting better.