Tech Stocks Are Crashing Today – Here’s Why

Tech shares went down quite a bit after investors started asking if the huge amount of money pouring into AI will produce the returns they expect.

The selling focused on chip companies, which had been the stock market’s biggest winners during the AI boom. Yahoo Finance reported that investors pulled back from semiconductor shares after growing doubts about AI spending and what it will eventually deliver.

The selling began to speed up after Chinese AI startup Moonshot released Kimi K3, a 2.8 trillion parameter model that it says is the world’s biggest open weight AI model. The announcement introduced fresh competition into a market already filled with huge spending from US companies.

What Happened In The Markets?

The tech heavy Nasdaq went down 1.25% during morning trading and earlier reached its lowest level for three weeks, according to Yahoo Finance. The S&P 500 also went down 0.58%, although the Dow Jones Industrial Average stayed almost unchanged.

Chip companies were the main reason behind the selling. Nvidia went down 1.4%, helping Apple briefly return to the top spot as the world’s most valuable listed company. The Philadelphia SE Semiconductor Index also went down 1.8% and has now gone down more than 20% since reaching a record high in late June, according to Yahoo Finance.

Fiona Cincotta, senior markets analyst at City Index, said, “It does feel very much a chip stock driven move, just sort of hurting sentiment more broadly.”

Is China Changing The AI Race?

Moonshot’s latest AI model has given investors a new reason to reassess expensive AI stocks.

The company says Kimi K3 matches the scale of the world’s biggest open weight AI models. Investors are asking how much value companies spending hundreds of billions of dollars on AI infrastructure will receive if open source alternatives continue improving.

Angelo Kourkafas, senior global investment strategist at Edward Jones Investments, said, “The latest development is the competition from open source models in China, which raised some competitive fears.”

He added, “Supposedly, there are some offerings that are rivaling the performance of Anthropic and OpenAI… potentially that is contributing today to some of that weakness that started in Asia.”

Those comments followed a remarkable run for technology shares. AI excitement had lifted stock markets to record highs, making even a small change in investor mood enough to send prices lower.

Why Are Memory Chip Companies Going Down Even Though AI Demand Is High?

One of the biggest surprises has been memory chip makers. Yahoo Finance reported that Micron, Sandisk and SK hynix have gone down between 30% and 35%, even though demand for AI memory chips continues at a very high level.

Micron recently reported record revenue and said its high bandwidth memory products are sold out well into future production. SK hynix has also reported healthy demand driven by Nvidia’s latest AI chips.

Yahoo Finance reported that increasing production could leave manufacturers selling 30% more chips but earning less money if average selling prices go down by 20%.

Cloud companies are spending more of their AI budgets on power infrastructure, liquid cooling systems and custom built chips and memory products could receive a smaller share of future AI spending even if demand continues.

Investors are also eyeing events outside the tech sector. Yahoo Finance reported that renewed conflict involving the United States, Iran and Kuwait added uncertainty within financial markets, even as US consumer sentiment reached a five month high in July. This could be that they are more interested in which companies will earn the most money from the hundreds of billions of dollars being spent on AI.