Panic on the Exchanges: Doubts About AI ROI Crash Chipmaker Stocks

Markets are experiencing a full-blown fever. On July 29, 2026, the Reuters news agency recorded a massive sell-off in the semiconductor sector (chip rout). Fear of an AI bubble is becoming the dominant mood on Wall Street and Asian trading floors.

Institutional investors refuse to bankroll technological hype in advance. The reason for the panic is purely mathematical: the trillion-dollar expenditures of hyperscalers on purchasing tensor hardware and building energy-intensive data centers (CAPEX) are not yet backed by adequate net cash flow from software product sales. The "buy silicon at any price" phase is officially closed. Ahead of Big Tech's quarterly reports, markets are demanding to see real margins (ROI) from the deployment of generative AI. If corporations fail to prove the commercial viability of their models, the tech sector faces a prolonged financial winter.

Source: Reuters