Tech stocks just had a memecoin-style meltdown.
Intel led the collapse, down 31% intraday to $63.20 after erasing over $130 billion in market value. The chipmaker guided Q4 revenue at $15-16B vs. $17B expected and its finance chief David Zinsner told investors it won't bring in more cash than it spends this year as PC demand weakens and data center chips face supply snags. 6f252893
Reddit was right behind, down 29-30% to $91.73. Despite revenue up 53% to $895M, daily active uniques missed — 130.3M globally, but US DAUs fell 2% to 50.7M — and management warned Google's AI summaries in Search are killing referral traffic. 1a5c2893
The pain was broad:
- Roblox -20% to $42.99 after daily active users declined
- Illumina -19%, SanDisk -15%, Arm -12.7%, Dell -12.5% 5b8fea74
The driver is AI cost anxiety. Amazon fell after missing estimates with negative free cash flow ballooning on AI capex, and Alphabet plunged over $500 billion on Thursday as its own AI summaries hurt search ads. c6ca
Result: The Nasdaq 100 opened down 2.5% to its lowest in over two months, and is now down 10% from its October high — officially entering correction territory. The Nasdaq Composite slid 3.6% to 25,237 and S&P 500 2.4%. 289300f4
Investors are no longer asking if AI will pay off, but when. And today, they sold first.