Wall Street suffers its worst day since June as AI fears put the Nasdaq on course to lose $2 trillion
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.
Intel crashed nearly 30% on Friday — flirting with its worst single day since 1974 — as Amazon and Reddit also tumbled sharply, dragging the Nasdaq composite down more than 3.5% and sealing Wall Street's worst session since June. The rout caps a brutal October in which over $2 trillion in value has been erased from the Nasdaq 100, a wipeout roughly equal to SpaceX's entire market valuation.
Thursday brought Alphabet's steepest one-day percentage decline on record, triggered by evidence that AI summaries are cannibalising its core search advertising revenue.
Reddit dropped 30% even though its earnings came in strong, after its chief executive cautioned that Google's AI overviews are hammering the platform's web traffic.
Big Tech is returning cash to shareholders at its lowest rate in 15 years, with Meta planning a record $97.5 billion fundraise that has deepened fears over shareholder dilution.
