Many tech companies are licking their wounds after a massive stock market slump. The sharp decline in market capitalization stems from doubts about the long-term expansion of AI and new uncertainty regarding political support for data centers in the U.S. Who lost the most, and why? And who is coming out on top among investors?
Looking at the biggest losers in absolute terms, Nvidia stands out by a wide margin. It is followed by TSMC, Tesla, SpaceX, and Broadcom, each of which lost about $160 billion or more in market value. Notably, the damage at Apple, Alphabet, and Amazon was relatively limited: they lost less than 3 percent. In percentage terms, the hardest hit among the big names was SanDisk (-22.2 percent). Micron (-17.5 percent), SK hynix (-9 percent), and Samsung (more than 6 percent over two consecutive trading days) also had to give up a significant portion of their gains. So, the biggest winners of the current memory shortage are, for now, also the biggest losers this week.
Losses are spilling over
These losses are by no means isolated: the tech-heavy Nasdaq lost about $2.5 trillion in market value in a single day. Of course, no physical dollars are disappearing from investors’ wallets, but for riskier bets on continued value growth, the impact is devastating. AMD (-17.3 percent), TSMC (-10.8 percent), Broadcom (-10.4 percent), ASML (-9.3 percent), and Cisco (-7.5 percent) show that all kinds of links in the AI expansion supply chain are feeling the pain of the market crash.
Returning to Nvidia, the 9.3 percent loss amounts to $448 billion in market capitalization. This means that all of the stock’s gains from 2026 have evaporated in one fell swoop; the stock is now trading even lower than it did on the last trading day of 2025. This occurred on a day when the Nasdaq experienced its worst day since April 2025.
SpaceX (-9.1 percent) and Tesla (-11 percent) appear to be suffering from a specific “Musk effect.” Musk poured hundreds of millions of dollars into a futile attempt to get more Republicans elected, and investors fear that his companies will come under closer scrutiny under a Democratic Congress. In addition, both companies are based in Texas, where Democratic governor-elect Gina Hinojosa wants to impose a moratorium on new data centers. With her as governor and Democratic majorities in both the House of Representatives and the Senate, it will be more difficult for Musk to push forward with his AI ambitions at the same pace. Incidentally, opposition to data centers is not solely a Democratic issue: incumbent Republican Governor Greg Abbott already halted the issuance of permits for new data centers in September pending an audit.
That’s not to say the AI expansion could count on the market’s full confidence beforehand. The major tech companies have poured hundreds of billions into data centers that, for the most part, have yet to be built or do not yet have sufficient power, on top of massive investments in hardware that cannot yet be utilized. Moreover, no one seems to know exactly how to depreciate an Nvidia GPU or Superchip: they consume an immense amount of energy and may no longer be profitable in two to four years if the energy shortage persists.
Not panic everywhere
In key areas, however, the negative sentiment isn’t as bad as it seems. Consider the hyperscalers themselves, notably the biggest drivers of physical AI expansion. Microsoft, Alphabet, and Amazon rose another 3 to 7 percent on Wednesday, putting them slightly in the black on balance since the election results, despite Thursday’s decline. Without the surrounding tech losses, you wouldn’t even call these notable stock market movements. Investors’ reasoning: a slower rollout will curb these companies’ massive investments, even though they already have a substantial network of data centers. Cloudflare also bucked the trend. After falling more than 8 percent during regular trading, the stock surged nearly 15 percent in after-hours trading thanks to strong quarterly results.
Lessons from the SaaSpocalypse
Earlier this year, we also saw a sharp correction, but on a completely different side of the IT world. Think back to the “SaaSpocalypse” in the first half of 2026. At the time, the software giants seemed to be punished and corrected to a significantly lower valuation, because AI was believed to be capable of taking over the functionality of entire enterprise applications. At least, that was the sentiment reflected in the deep red stock prices.
The lesson seems to be that a correction of apocalyptic proportions only holds true to a limited extent. It also shows that no one knows who will continue to bear the brunt of the damage for much longer and who won’t. ServiceNow is still down 33 percent from the start of 2026, and Intuit (-46 percent) and HubSpot (-49 percent) fared even worse over that same period. Atlassian (+13 percent), Workday (-7 percent), and Salesforce (-16 percent), on the other hand, have fully or largely recouped their losses. It just depends on where you draw the line: Salesforce is up 52 percent from its low on June 22, Workday is up 81 percent from April 9, and Atlassian is up a staggering 227 percent from April 10. However, Atlassian took another hit of about 16 percent in after-hours trading on Thursday evening following the release of its quarterly results.
Conclusion: Wait and see
Even the most celebrated stock market analysts cannot make reliable predictions about future stock prices. It’s a daunting task to estimate the value of the AI boom, let alone predict who the big winners will be. AI labs are showing rapidly growing revenues, but they’re investing even more in computing power, hoping for unprecedented growth. The surrounding infrastructure relies on the assumption that this technology’s hardware, networks, and applications will generate sufficient value.
As promising as that may sound, the U.S. elections once again brought the real world into focus. Where do you locate your data centers? How do you secure the energy? How much can you ask of local residents in terms of nuisance and energy prices, and should you even be asking that question? The answers will emerge in political debates, public discussions, and ultimately in regulations that seem inevitable. That brake could also put a stop to the unprecedented increases in value, with potentially serious consequences for sentiment surrounding the broader global economy. As a result, the choices surrounding AI expansion are now more uncertain than ever, leading to a logical correction.