Chip Stocks Shed $2 Trillion as Nasdaq Nears One-Month Low

Chip stocks erased close to $2 trillion in market value in the session through October 15, pushing the Nasdaq Composite to its lowest level in roughly a month. The trigger wasn't a demand problem — it was debt. Several analysts pointed to the bond market as the weak link in the AI trade: CoreWeave, the cloud computing firm that leases GPU capacity to AI developers, has seen its equity story come under pressure as its debt-financed buildout gets scrutinized by bond investors, not just stockholders. The selloff has been broad enough that some analysts now argue it has overshot the fundamentals. One take circulating on ASML, the Dutch lithography equipment maker critical to advanced chipmaking, called the pullback in its shares 'indiscriminate' given the company's order backlog hasn't changed. That split — between a debt-market story and a demand story — is the central question for the sector right now. What's unresolved is whether rising borrowing costs for AI infrastructure spending start to show up in actual capital-expenditure plans from hyperscalers, or whether this is a bond-market scare that fades once credit spreads normalize.