Tech and AI-related stocks slumped Friday, poised for their worst week since July as fears mount that the debt-fueled data center buildout won’t pay off.
The Nasdaq and S&P 500 on Friday slumped 2.4% and 1.3%, respectively, with the latter on track for its worst week since June.
The VanEck Semiconductor ETF – which tracks top chipmakers – slipped 3.3%, set to end the week down more than 10%.
Shares of SanDisk, AMD and Micron plunged 6.7%, 5.9% and 5.7%, respectively.
CoreWeave – a massive AI cloud provider – suffered a dramatic sell-off this week, plummeting 13.5% Friday and 25% over the past five days.
It’s one of the companies that could be hit the hardest if the AI boom implodes, since its business model is based on buying up pricey computing power and renting it out to other companies.
Concerns that AI stocks have been overvalued and Chinese competition is heating up are “turning into a full-blown crisis of confidence,” said Nic Puckrin, cross-asset analyst and founder of Coin Bureau.
“The valuations of the companies at the center of the buildout may end up being unrealistic. That’s why we’ve seen chip stocks sell off, that’s why Anthropic’s $2 trillion valuation is now being questioned,” he told The Post.
“We could still see rebounds in tech stock prices from here on, but the days of indiscriminately profiting from anything AI-related are very likely over.”
The gap between what firms are spending on compute today and what they are expected to earn in the long run has been widening.
New research from Gartner this week found AI providers are expected to spend $7 trillion on infrastructure through 2030 – but generate no more than $3.6 trillion in AI-related revenue over the same period.
It also predicted that more than 80% of so-called “neoclouds,” like CoreWeave, will shutter altogether within the decade.
Still, global demand for AI chips and memory is so high that it’s fueled shortages, sending costs ever higher.
Anthropic — which is expected to target a $2 trillion-plus valuation later this year — reportedly saw its third-quarter revenue skyrocket 45% to $16.8 billion in the third quarter.
TSMC, the second-largest chipmaker in the world, recently recorded a sixth straight quarter of record profits, as revenue surged 51%.
But scrutiny over the companies’ valuations has intensified as traders worry there could eventually be an oversupply of AI products in the US, if the huge amount of debt taken out to build expensive infrastructure fails to translate into blowout revenue.
Meanwhile, the brave group of short-sellers betting against the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index – an AI chip benchmark – minted an estimated $32 billion in gross paper gains this week, according to S3 Partners LLC data analyzed by Bloomberg.
Those who bet against CoreWeave are on track to generate more than $1 billion this week, and credit-default swaps on the company are pricing in more than 50% odds of a default within the next five years.
About a third of the capex being spent on AI is coming from debt – and it’s already getting harder for tech giants to secure financing.
Global AI-related debt issuance fell to $23 billion last month, down from $113 billion in June, according to the Financial Times.
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