$1T in Tech Stocks Sold Off as Market Grows Skeptical of AI (gizmodo.com)

Roughly $1 trillion of market value evaporated last week from high‑profile tech names tied to generative AI — including Nvidia, Oracle, Meta and Palantir — as investor enthusiasm cooled. The rout extended well beyond core AI vendors: Microsoft fell 8.6% over eight trading days (wiping out about $350 billion in market value), and niche experiments like Sweetgreen’s robotics/automation push have been scaled back or sold off. Overall, outlets flagged the worst week for Wall Street in years amid widening skepticism about whether massive AI expenditures are translating into profits. For the AI/ML community, the downturn matters because it signals a reassessment of the economics of large‑scale model development and cloud AI infrastructure. Bloomberg and others point to ballooning AI spend — Microsoft reported nearly $35 billion in quarterly expenditures — while revenue and margin improvements remain uneven, prompting investor scrutiny of capex, talent hiring and project ROI. The selloff could slow infrastructure rollouts, tighten funding for speculative AI pilots, and accelerate consolidation or pivots toward clearer monetization paths. Coupled with weak macro indicators (heavy tech job cuts, deteriorating consumer sentiment and a stalled government backdrop), the episode underscores that technical progress alone won’t shield AI strategies from financial and operational discipline.