CNBC Daily Open: U.S. tech shares pull back amid growing AI bubble worries (www.cnbc.com)

U.S. tech shares pulled back Wednesday as investors fretted about an AI “bubble” and took profits, leaving the Nasdaq down even as individual names like Intel popped on takeover-investment chatter. Central to the market jitters: reports that OpenAI will use Nvidia’s recently announced cash investment — cited as about $100 billion — to lease Nvidia chips, and that OpenAI’s broader $850 billion buildout plans are prompting concern over scope and sustainability. Analysts flagged the circularity risk that much of the cash could flow back to Nvidia as chip sales or leases, heightening competition and regulatory scrutiny and prompting short-term profit-taking in major AI names. For the AI/ML community the story matters because it underscores two technical and strategic risks: vendor lock‑in and fragile supply chains. Leasing Nvidia hardware ties large-scale training and inference capacity closely to a single supplier, affecting pricing, availability and competition for top‑tier GPUs. At the same time, new U.S. probes into tariffs on robotics and medical equipment — plus existing reliance on foreign suppliers for specialized parts — could raise costs and delay datacenter, power and hardware projects needed to support massive AI deployments. Practitioners and infra planners should factor in procurement risk, multi-vendor strategies and potential regulatory shifts when sizing and timing large-model investments.