AI spending fears wipe over $2 trillion off the Nasdaq in October as Intel crashes nearly 30% in a day
A Google DeepMind promotional screen introducing Gemini, the AI brand whose new Gemini 4 Carbon model Sundar Pichai unveiled just before Alphabet's earnings call as its shares tumbled over 10%.A two-week Alphabet share-price chart, sourced from Yahoo Finance, showing the plunge that wiped $500 billion from the company's value after profit collapsed 25% to $26.2 billion.
Alphabet suffered the largest single-day market cap loss in its history on Thursday, with investors wiping nearly $500 billion from its value after AI spending overwhelmed its core search advertising revenue. Friday's sell-off then hammered the wider Nasdaq, dragging it down more than 3% and pushing the index's total October losses past $2 trillion — roughly equal to SpaceX's entire market valuation.
Intel plunged nearly 30% — its worst single-day drop since 1974 — after its CFO David Zinsner warned the PC slowdown would continue into next year.
Meta, Alphabet, Amazon and Microsoft have collectively committed over $720 billion to AI data centres and infrastructure in 2026 alone, with returns still unclear.
Reddit tumbled 30% even after posting a strong earnings report, with the chief executive's warning that Google's AI summaries are gutting its web traffic unnerving investors.
