Chip stocks around the world sold off sharply Tuesday, the latest chapter in the monthslong jitters surrounding artificial intelligence, memory and chip stocks.
The sell-off pushed the Nasdaq-100 index into correction territory earlier Tuesday, which is a drop of 10% or more from its most recent record high. The index, which tracks the top 100 nonfinancial companies traded on the Nasdaq exchange, ended the day down 1%.
The Philadelphia Semiconductor Index on Tuesday sank into bear market territory, which is a 20% drop or more from its most recent record high.
Shares of several chip and memory giants fell significantly. Sandisk ended the day down 14%, while AMD, ARM Holdings, Micron and Seagate plunged more than 8%.
Dell Technologies, which is a leading producer of data center servers that use chips and memory made by those firms, tumbled 8.1%. Intel shares slid 5.8%.
The selling kicked off overnight in Asia, with stocks traded on markets in South Korea, Japan and Taiwan.
Both Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix, the primary manufacturers of memory used in AI data centers, plunged more than 15%. Kioxia, another computer storage maker, plummeted 18%.
Overnight, South Korea’s Kospi stock index extended its decline from its most recent record high to more than 30%. That decline has occurred rapidly, over just the last 25 trading days, Bespoke Investment Group noted.
The steep decline of that index follows a stunning 300% rally that started in April 2025 and ended toward the end of June.
“After one of the most parabolic rallies in history for a major global index, the KOSPI is currently in the midst of one of its fastest-ever bear-market drops,” Bespoke analysts wrote.
The latest wave of investor unease followed a report Monday that a Chinese state-backed firm was beginning mass production of domestic chipmaking tools.
However, the report did not name the company. NBC News was not able to verify the report.
Still, shares of established firms that make chip manufacturing equipment such as ASML, Canon and Nikon fell sharply on the news.
Tuesday’s moves also come ahead of major earnings reports later in the week from Meta, Amazon, Microsoft and other companies that are spending hundreds of billions of dollars to build AI data centers. Those results could prove pivotal to the trajectory of the market.
Last week, Alphabet shares plunged 7% after the company reported its results and increased its projected capital expenditures to as much as $205 billion. Most of that will go to building and expanding data centers.
Evercore technology analyst Mark Mahaney said last week that Alphabet would likely set the stage for Microsoft and Amazon to do the same when they report this week.
“The Capex increase increases the odds of similar behavior from AWS and Azure,” he wrote in a note Wednesday, referring to capital expenditures, or money companies spend on building physical infrastructure.
Still, despite investor jitters, “cloud demand appears relentless,” he added.
On Friday, JPMorgan said that artificial intelligence-related spending by companies is set to approach “about $870bn by year-end 2026.” That’s 77% higher than the same spending a year ago.
So-called hyperscalers like Amazon, Meta, Microsoft and Alphabet represent “about $750bn of that total,” said Fabio Bassi, JPMorgan head of cross-asset strategy.
Apple, which is not spending hundreds of billions of dollars building its own data centers, rallied about 1% Tuesday and briefly surpassed $5 trillion in market value for the first time. It’s only the second time that any company has ever clinched the milestone.
Apple also surpassed Nvidia as the world’s largest public company. Nvidia shares ended the day up fractionally at a $4.77 trillion value, below Apple’s $4.95 trillion.
Beyond the rout in chip stocks, U.S. markets overall continued to power higher.
The S&P 500 and Russell 2000 both ended the day up by 0.2%. The Dow rallied almost 540 points, powered by shares of IBM, Coca-Cola, Boeing and Salesforce.
“Nothing seems to shake this market,” HSBC’s Max Kettner wrote in a Monday note.
Part of that has to do with positive earnings results so far this quarter. “Even when excluding the blockbuster numbers from Alphabet, the average earnings surprise is well in excess of the post-COVID-19 pandemic average,” he wrote.
The Coca-Cola Co. reported one of those positive results on Tuesday. Not only did it beat analyst earnings per share and revenue expectations, it also increased its full-year forecast, a sign that consumers are not cutting back.
