Intel missed estimates and issued weak guidance and Amazon also fell short,
reviving concern about the AI investment trade and triggering a broad sell-off
in semiconductor names. Chipmakers, equipment makers and analog suppliers all
declined. Broadcom opened down about 4% in Friday regular trading, AMD plunged
nearly 10%, Micron lost 5.5% and Intel fell nearly 30%, wiping roughly $120bn
from its market value. Chip-equipment shares dropped as well: Applied Materials
fell about 5% and Lam Research about 5.5%. The sector is highly sensitive to
capex reductions—cuts to memory and logic spending typically hit equipment
vendors first. Qualcomm slid amid weakness in wireless and handset markets.
Market participants flagged worries over softer enterprise hardware demand and a
bottleneck in smartphone consumption.
