Payback for Servers: AI Giant Stocks Plunge Amid CAPEX ROI Fears

The mad rush for computing power has turned into a market sobering. On October 23, 2026, the US stock market experienced a severe sell-off of technology sector stocks. The Nasdaq Composite index lost 2.6%, NVIDIA shares sank 4.4%, Meta dropped by 7%, and the stock of cloud AI provider CoreWeave plummeted by a staggering 10.1%.

According to Reuters and AP, the sell-off was triggered not by a technical glitch, but by a fundamental reassessment of the industry's macroeconomics. Investors panicked over the cost of debt financing and the gigantic scale of CAPEX for building AI infrastructure. The market realized: rising demand for tokens and agents does not guarantee a quick ROI for the concrete boxes of data centers and silicon chips. This is a systemic signal (an "AI reset")—the era of unconditional lending to AI startups is over. Shareholders are demanding a halt to the burning of liquidity and the demonstration of real profits from deployed technologies, threatening Big Tech with a full-scale investment boycott.

Source: Reuters / Associated Press