Chip Stocks Rebound After AI Rout; Nasdaq 100 Gains 2% | Magica
Chip-Stock Gauge Rebounds 6%, but AI Spending Test Remains
Editorial Team
••📖5 min read
Chip shares recovered part of Thursday’s losses in early Friday trading. Fears about data-centre construction face a test against AI-chip supplier Nvidia’s strong reported sales, growth forecast and conditional infrastructure-financing plans.
A semiconductor-stock gauge rose 6% in early Friday trading; AI-chip supplier Nvidia and chipmaker Micron Technology recovered only part of Thursday’s losses.
The selloff reflected fears about data-centre construction, rather than a documented fall in chip orders.
Nvidia’s earlier growth forecast and conditional financing plans show the scale of investment still at stake.
Chip stocks rebounded on November 6 after a technology selloff pushed the Nasdaq Composite more than 10% below its recent record. The early recovery left Nvidia and Micron below their levels before Thursday’s rout, according to the early-session market account.
The recovery followed post-election fears about slower data-centre construction, putting the investment feeding chipmakers’ revenues under scrutiny. Nvidia’s August results show the scale of that business and substantial expansion plans that predate the vote.
Thursday’s declines and Friday’s early gains use separate starting prices; they cannot be added to calculate cumulative returns. Friday readings are intraday. Source: CNBC TV18 via TradingView.
A rebound that leaves losses unrecovered
The early-session account put the Nasdaq Composite up 1.9% and the S&P 500 up 1%, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 99 points, or 0.2%. A gauge of major semiconductor companies jumped 6%, against a 2% gain for the Nasdaq 100. These were intraday readings, not closing results; the account did not name the semiconductor gauge.
Thursday’s declines had been much larger: the Nasdaq Composite lost 5.5%, the S&P 500 fell 4.4% and the Dow dropped 3.4%. The report described those as the indexes’ steepest one-day losses since April 2025.
The stock-level comparison illustrates how much ground remained to recover:
Airbnb sold intellectual property to a private AI lab controlled by CEO Brian Chesky in a $7.1 million arrangement that also reimburses expenses. It obtained a license to certain lab technology and future investment rights, but disclosed no asset valuation or detailed license terms.
The calculation multiplies the two successive returns: for Micron, 0.83 × 1.09 leaves about 90.5% of the starting share price. It uses rounded reported changes and measures price movement, excluding dividends.
The benchmarks also have different scopes. Nasdaq’s index review describes the Nasdaq 100 as 100 of the largest non-financial companies listed on its exchange, using modified market-capitalisation weights. At the end of 2025, its ten largest securities represented 52% of its weight. That historical concentration helps explain why a rise in the index alone is insufficient evidence of a market-wide recovery.
Micron’s sharp swings also follow a strong earlier run: the same review records a 240% return for the company in 2025.
Spending fears confront a large, growing business
The Friday account linked Thursday’s selling to concerns about slower data-centre construction and AI spending after Democratic victories in the US House and Senate and key state governor races. It did not identify a specific restriction taking effect or quantify a resulting reduction in construction. An election result, a proposed constraint and a cancelled order are different stages of the risk.
Nvidia’s financial exposure is substantial. In its August 26 results announcement, the company reported $89.0 billion in Data Center revenue for the quarter ended July 26, 2026, up 117% from a year earlier and 18% from the preceding quarter. Against $96.2 billion in total quarterly revenue, those rounded figures put Data Center at about 92.5% of sales.
Nvidia’s August forecast also called for third-quarter revenue of $108 billion, plus or minus 2%, without assuming Data Center compute revenue from China. That was a company forecast made before the elections, rather than an observed result or an assessment of their consequences.
The announcement also shows Nvidia’s role extending beyond supplying chips. The company said it had announced partnerships with six financial firms to establish independent compute-financing platforms intended to mobilize more than $500 billion of third-party capital for AI infrastructure over time. The plans were subject to definitive agreements: the figure was neither money already raised nor completed construction spending.
Nvidia also said a partnership with SB Energy had secured land, power and shell capacity for a site in Ohio to host its computing equipment. Land and power requirements make construction a material issue alongside chip demand.
The company also described AI infrastructure partnerships in Korea and Japan. Its Data Center sales therefore should not be treated as a measure of dependence on US construction alone.
Nvidia’s company-reported revenue by business for the quarter ended July 26, 2026. These results predate the November elections. Source: NVIDIA.
A different AI scare offers a limited comparison
The January 2025 DeepSeek selloff provides a precedent for a sharp bounce leaving losses unrecovered, but involved a different threat. A contemporaneous market account recorded Nvidia rising more than 6% after losing about 17% the previous session.
That episode followed the launch of a free AI assistant by DeepSeek, a Chinese startup that said its service used less data at a fraction of incumbents’ cost. The account noted skepticism about those cost claims. The competitive question was whether cheaper AI could change demand for advanced computing; this week’s reported concern is whether construction will slow.
The next test is spending and construction
Investors were also weighing interest rates. The Friday account, citing US Bureau of Labor Statistics data, put October payroll growth at 165,000 and unemployment at 4.1%, describing the stronger-than-expected jobs reading as reinforcing expectations of a December increase by the Federal Reserve, the US central bank. The account said officials would receive another jobs report and inflation data before their December decision.
Resolving the AI spending question requires evidence of which restrictions are proposed or enacted, which projects change schedules and whether customers revise investment plans or chip orders. Nvidia’s subsequent results can also test its pre-election growth forecast. Until those signals emerge, Friday’s early rebound establishes a partial recovery in share prices, while the effect on the infrastructure business remains unmeasured.
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