Tech stocks plunge as midterms hit AI optimism

Global tech stocks plunge after the US midterm elections rattled bets on unchecked AI expansion, with the Nasdaq falling about 5.5% and roughly $2.5 trillion erased from market value in a single session. The so-called Magnificent Seven alone shed around $1 trillion, according to the BBC.

Chip leaders led the slide. Nvidia dropped more than 9%, while AMD and Micron each fell more than 17%. SpaceX shares were down about 8% and Tesla roughly 11%, taking around $300 billion off Elon Musk-linked firms in the same move.

Why tech stocks plunge spread from Wall Street to Asia

European semiconductor names were hit as well, with Infineon down about 8.5% and ASML about 6.5%. Into Friday trading in Asia, Japan’s Nikkei and South Korea’s Kospi each fell around 6%. SK Hynix dropped more than 10% and Samsung about 6.4%.

The breadth of the move mattered as much as the headline indexes. Memory suppliers, GPU designers, lithography specialists and consumer-electronics giants all sold off together, a sign that traders were repricing the entire AI hardware stack rather than a single earnings miss.

Investors fear that Democrats, who won both the Senate and the House, will push harder against rapid data-centre buildouts that power AI training. Texas Democratic governor-elect Gina Hinojosa has pledged a data-centre moratorium in her state. Senator Bernie Sanders has called for a national pause on new data centres.

• Nasdaq: about −5.5%; ~$2.5tn market value lost.
• Magnificent Seven: ~$1tn wiped in one day.
• Nvidia −9%+; AMD and Micron −17%+.
• Asia follow-through: Nikkei −6%, Kospi −6%, SK Hynix −10%+.

Politics, data centres and the AI spend question

US President Donald Trump blamed Democrats for the sell-off in a Truth Social post. Industry voices struck a different tone: OpenAI’s Greg Brockman and Meta’s Dina Powell McCormick said technology firms must engage local communities more carefully as projects grow.

Alongside the political shock, some investors renewed doubts that massive AI capital spending will earn adequate returns. That twin worry—regulation plus weak payoff—helped turn a Washington result into a global equity event within hours.

Power, land and water constraints already shape where hyperscale campuses can be built. When elected officials talk about moratoriums, equity markets treat that talk as a direct hit to future GPU and networking demand, even before any bill is signed.

Readers tracking the same themes in Thailand and beyond can see how rising data-centre demand is already pressing power capacity, why some US officials face an OpenAI data-centre NDA ban debate, and how the midterm shock also fed into political fallout after the Republican defeat.

What traders will watch next

Near-term, markets will parse any concrete bills or state moratoriums on data centres, comments from chipmakers on order visibility, and whether Asian suppliers of memory and foundry capacity cut guidance. A single midterm night does not rewrite AI demand overnight, but it can change the discount rate investors apply to long-dated growth stories.

Volatility may stay elevated while Congress organises committees and statehouses test campaign pledges against local tax and job arguments. Corporate messaging will likely stress community engagement, energy efficiency and clearer benefit-sharing—points Brockman and Powell McCormick already flagged.

For now, the BBC’s verified snapshot is stark: tech stocks plunge across the United States, Europe and Asia after Democrats took Congress, with trillion-dollar losses concentrated in AI-linked names and fresh political risk priced into every major data-centre bet.

Photo: New York Stock Exchange (Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0).