Tumbling AI stocks signal another day of turmoil for tech companies
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- Apple fell 6% overnight after raising prices on MacBooks and iPads, citing higher chip costs, fueling fears that soaring semiconductor prices will squeeze margins across big tech.
- SoftBank Group sank more than 12%, leading regional losses, as its chip designer Arm Holdings fell 3.2% overnight and reports surfaced that OpenAI may delay its IPO to next year amid trouble securing demand at a $1 trillion valuation.
- U.S. semiconductor stocks struggled in premarket trading: Intel shed over 3%, Sandisk fell 4.74%, Arm dropped 3.66% and Marvell lost 3.29%, while European chip names ASML, Infineon, ASM International, ST Microelectronics and Be Semiconductor each lost between 0.83% and 3.67%.
- Asian chipmakers bore the heaviest losses, with SK Hynix down more than 8%, Samsung Electronics off around 9%, Japan's Advantest declining nearly 10%, TSMC falling 2.09% and SMIC tumbling more than 6.9%, while Greater China tech names Tencent, Alibaba, Baidu and Xiaomi each dropped between 2% and over 6%.
- Qualcomm's new AI data-center chip deal with Meta is ultimately positive for Arm through royalty payments, according to Ortus Advisors strategist Andrew Jackson, though Arm faces growing competition as Qualcomm pushes deeper into the CPU market.
- Microsoft fell 3.5% after raising Xbox console prices, while Alphabet and Meta Platforms also declined, as the Nasdaq Composite fell for a fourth straight session.
Why it matters: Apple passing chip inflation through to consumer prices marks a rare concession from the world's most valuable hardware maker that component costs are now hitting margins — not just forecasts. The simultaneous double-digit rout among upstream chip equipment and memory suppliers (Advantest -10%, Samsung -9%) shows the market sees no near-term relief, trapping chipmakers between soaring capex demands from AI customers and weakening downstream demand.
