Wall Street ends sharply down as AI worries weigh

Wall Street ended sharply lower on Thursday, with the Nasdaq ‌dragged ​to its lowest since November by losses in ‌Microsoft, Amazon and other tech heavyweights after Alphabet said it could double capital spending on AI in the ​race to dominate the emerging technology.

Shares of Alphabet fell 0.55% after the Google parent said it plans as much as $185 billion in capex in 2026. Together, it and ‍its Big Tech rivals are expected to collectively ​shell out more than $500 billion on AI this year.

Adding to recent losses, Microsoft dropped 5%, Palantir lost 6.8% and Oracle fell 7%.

Amazon lost 4.4% during regular trading ​and then tumbled another 10% after the closing bell, joining its Big Tech peers in projecting massive capital expenditures in 2026. It was the latest sign that tech companies will not hit the brakes anytime soon on hefty AI investments. 

Shares of chipmaker Nvidia, which stands to benefit from increased industry spending on AI, declined 1.4%.

Investors in recent months have grown more wary of heavy spending on AI, awaiting stronger signs those investments are actually boosting revenue and profits.

“This is ‌the first time we’ve seen the large-cap tech companies -- the Microsofts and the Alphabets and the Amazons -- go through a really large capex ​cycle ...  ‌and we’re seeing this volatility about whether ‍this investment will translate, ultimately, ⁠into results,” said Tom Hainlin, an investment strategist at U.S. Bank Wealth Management in Minneapolis.

Investors this week have also worried that rapidly improving AI tools could eat into demand for traditional software, squeezing profit margins across the sector.

Software and data services stocks added to recent losses, with ServiceNow down 7.6% and Salesforce losing almost 5%.

The S&P 500 software and services index fell 4.6%, down for a seventh straight session.

“The AI trade which was the accelerant last year is perhaps the extinguisher this year with people realizing that AI is going to help certain kinds of companies but it is also going to hurt, particularly software, for example,” said Melissa Brown, SimCorp’s managing director ​of investment decision research.

Qualcomm slid 8.5% after forecasting second-quarter revenue and profit below estimates.

The CBOE volatility index, Wall Street’s “fear gauge,” briefly hit the highest in over two months.

As traders dialed back exposure to pricey AI stocks, the market’s rotation into relatively cheaper stocks gained steam in recent days. 

The S&P 500 value index dipped 0.9%, but remained in positive territory for the week. The S&P 500 growth index was down more than 4% for the week.

The S&P 500 declined 1.23% to end the session at 6,798.40 points. The Nasdaq declined 1.59% to 22,540.59 points, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average declined 1.20% to 48,908.72 points.

Nine of the 11 S&P 500 sector indexes declined, led lower by materials, down 2.75%, followed by a 2.59% loss in consumer discretionary.

Snap topped fourth-quarter revenue estimates, but its shares declined more than 13%.