Shares of the biggest names in U.S. technology took a sharp dive Monday, with SpaceX extending its losing streak to three straight sessions and major cloud computing companies Alphabet and Amazon on track to shed hundreds of billions of dollars in combined market value — all fueled by growing investor anxiety over the enormous costs of building out artificial intelligence infrastructure.
SpaceX dropped more than 10% following a sharp rally in the days after its initial public offering. The company, led by Elon Musk, announced Monday that it is launching a notes offering.
Alphabet fell 6% — its steepest single-day decline since May 2025 — and appeared set to wipe out more than $256 billion in market capitalization. Adding to the pressure, John Jumper, a senior research scientist at Google DeepMind and a Nobel laureate, announced his departure to join AI startup Anthropic, marking another prominent exit from the company.
David Wagner, head of equity and portfolio manager at Aptus Capital Advisors, described the situation as a broader retreat across the sector. “This is more of a broader sector pullback on ongoing anxiety over tech companies’ massive capital spend on the AI infrastructure,” he said.
Amazon fell 4.8%, while Meta Platforms and Microsoft each slipped roughly 3%. Combined, those three companies were on pace to lose more than $248 billion in market value.
Large cloud and technology firms have poured billions of dollars into expanding their AI capabilities, but investors remain skeptical as clear proof that those investments will generate meaningful returns has yet to materialize.
On the other side of the ledger, most chip-related stocks moved higher. Memory chipmaker Micron Technology led the gains with a 5.8% jump, reaching record highs. Micron also announced a new strategic partnership with Anthropic aimed at advancing next-generation AI infrastructure.
Wagner drew a clear line between the winners and losers in the current market environment. “There’s a distinguishing aspect of this market between those who are receiving the checks, like memory names and those who are writing the checks,” he said.
Micron, along with data storage companies SanDisk and Western Digital, rank among the top performers on the S&P 500 so far this year, emerging as the primary beneficiaries of Wall Street’s optimism around AI-driven demand.
