{"id":189996,"date":"2025-12-17T20:40:07","date_gmt":"2025-12-17T20:40:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/189996\/"},"modified":"2025-12-17T20:40:07","modified_gmt":"2025-12-17T20:40:07","slug":"tech-stocks-plunge-as-ai-angst-returns","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/189996\/","title":{"rendered":"Tech stocks plunge as AI angst returns"},"content":{"rendered":"<p id=\"anchor-1cc9c1\" class=\"body-graf\">Stocks dropped sharply on Wednesday as jitters about the booming artificial intelligence sector once again returned to the top of investors&#8217; minds.<\/p>\n<p id=\"anchor-aeb037\" class=\"body-graf\">The catalyst for the tumble was, once again, a story about cloud computing giant <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/quotes\/ORCL\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Oracle<\/a>. <\/p>\n<p id=\"anchor-7273f6\" class=\"body-graf\">Before the opening bell rang, the<a href=\"https:\/\/www.ft.com\/content\/84c147a4-aabb-4243-8298-11fabf1022a3\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\"> Financial Times published<\/a> a story headlined: &#8220;Oracle\u2019s $10bn Michigan data centre in limbo after Blue Owl funding talks stall.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p id=\"anchor-5c405b\" class=\"body-graf\">Blue Owl is a fund that has been the &#8220;primary backer for Oracle\u2019s largest data center projects in the U.S.,&#8221; according to the report.<\/p>\n<p id=\"anchor-3dd395\" class=\"body-graf\">In a statement Oracle said &#8220;the FT story is incorrect,&#8221; but confirmed that Blue Owl was not part of the funding talks.<\/p>\n<p id=\"anchor-db7800\" class=\"body-graf\">&#8220;Our development partner, Related Digital, selected the best equity partner from a competitive group of options, which in this instance was not Blue Owl,&#8221; a spokesman for Oracle said. &#8220;Final negotiations for their equity deal are moving forward on schedule and according to plan.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p id=\"anchor-726a4a\" class=\"body-graf\">&#8220;The notion that Blue Owl walked away is unequivocally false,&#8221; Related Digital said in a statement shortly after Oracle&#8217;s. The company said it expects &#8220;to deliver the project on schedule.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p id=\"anchor-ffb8e8\" class=\"body-graf\">Despite the denials, the lack of a publicly identified funding partner for the project rattled investors and stoked fears that Oracle&#8217;s recent stumbles could spread to the rest of the AI ecosystem. <\/p>\n<p id=\"anchor-8bc30a\" class=\"body-graf\">As of 1:10p.m. ET, Oracle shares were down nearly 4.5%. The stock is now down more than 40% in just the last three months, but still clinging to an 8% overall gain this year.<\/p>\n<p id=\"anchor-b14c35\" class=\"body-graf\">Oracle&#8217;s drop dragged other AI-related stocks lower as well. Some of the worst performers on the Nasdaq 100 index included chipmakers such as Broadcom and Arm Holdings, which were both down around 5%. <\/p>\n<p id=\"anchor-605f02\" class=\"body-graf\">The Nasdaq Composite also slid more than 1%. The S&amp;P 500 fell 0.7%. <\/p>\n<p id=\"anchor-81027b\" class=\"body-graf\">Despite Wednesday&#8217;s drama, major indexes remain well in the green for the year that&#8217;s coming to a close. The S&amp;P 500&#8217;s year-to-date gain is more than 14%, and the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite&#8217;s is more than 18%. <\/p>\n<p id=\"anchor-c2c8ae\" class=\"body-graf\">Nvidia, the largest public company in the world and the poster child for the AI boom, dropped about 3% Wednesday morning. Advanced Micro Devices, whose business is similar to Nvidia&#8217;s, also sank 3.8%.<\/p>\n<p id=\"anchor-5807fe\" class=\"body-graf\">The ripple effect did not stop there, however.<\/p>\n<p id=\"anchor-e66d3b\" class=\"body-graf\">GE Vernova, a manufacturer of gas turbines and other power systems for data centers, also slid 7.7% and was the worst S&amp;P 500 stock. Constellation Energy and energy provider Vistra also tumbled more than 6%.<\/p>\n<p id=\"anchor-468802\" class=\"body-graf\">Despite Wednesday&#8217;s jitters, John Higgins at Capital Economics said he and his colleagues do not believe, &#8220;the AI rally is dead yet, and expect it to last through 2026.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p id=\"anchor-dc8da9\" class=\"body-graf\">&#8220;That view underpins our forecasts for strong gains in those equity markets most exposed to it, particularly the US and some of those in Asia,&#8221; he wrote in an email Wednesday.<\/p>\n<p id=\"anchor-fcbd50\" class=\"body-graf\">Yet Higgins cautioned, &#8220;we don\u2019t think the good times for tech will last forever.&#8221; He said that Capital Economics suspects &#8220;valuations will eventually become sufficiently stretched that a correction is likely,&#8221; but not until 2027.<\/p>\n<p id=\"anchor-6b15e0\" class=\"endmark body-graf\">Investors could get a fresh read on the AI industry after the closing bell on Wednesday, when chipmaker Micron reports earnings.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Stocks dropped sharply on Wednesday as jitters about the booming artificial intelligence sector once again returned to the&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":189997,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[345,343,344,85,46,125],"class_list":{"0":"post-189996","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-artificialintelligence","11":"tag-il","12":"tag-israel","13":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189996","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=189996"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189996\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/189997"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=189996"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=189996"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=189996"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}