Stocks tied to the artificial intelligence buildout fell broadly again in Thursday morning trading. On Wednesday, after Democrats swept the midterm elections, data-center builders and power-equipment makers fell as much as 20% or more, and Dell Technologies (NYSE:DELL), optical-networking makers, and other AI hardware names dropped 7% to 10%, even as the S&P 500 rose. Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA) slipped about 3% and Arm Holdings (NASDAQ:ARM) about 5%. But Thursday was worse for the biggest names. Nvidia's drop nearly doubled to about 6%, and Arm's to about 10%, and this time the broader market fell too, with the S&P 500 down about 1.5% as of roughly 9:55 a.m. ET. The builders and adjacent stocks hit hardest on Wednesday kept falling, though by less, with data-center cooling stock Modine (NYSE:MOD) down 9% after a 21% decline on Wednesday. Many big names felt quite a bit of damage. Nvidia, the chipmaker at the center of the AI boom, fell about 6% to $188.75. Dell, one of the biggest sellers of AI servers, dropped about 9%, erasing about $20 billion in market value, and Arm lost about 10%, another roughly $20 billion. Palantir Technologies (NASDAQ:PLTR), server and component makers Hewlett Packard Enterprise (NYSE:HPE), and Celestica (NYSE:CLS) each fell 7% to 8%. Astera Labs (NASDAQ:ALAB), which makes chips that connect AI hardware inside data centers, slid about 11%. Meanwhile, builders fell for a second day. Comfort Systems USA (NYSE:FIX), a mechanical and electrical contractor with heavy exposure to AI projects, fell about 9%. Argan (NYSE:AGX) lost about 9% and MasTec (NYSE:MTZ) about 8%, both pace for their second drop of 7% or more this month. EMCOR (NYSE:EME) and Dycom (NYSE:DY) were down 6% to 7%. Also hard hit were optical-networking companies, which make the lasers and equipment that move data across fiber lines, including inside AI data centers. Ciena (NYSE:CIEN) fell about 11%, wiping out about $4.3 billion in value. Applied Optoelectronics (NASDAQ:AAOI) dropped about 13%, and Coherent (NYSE:COHR) and MACOM Technology (NASDAQ:MTSI) fell 9% to 11%. Several companies that got their start in Bitcoin mining now build or rent out data centers for AI customers, and they fell too. Applied Digital (NASDAQ:APLD), which builds large data centers for AI workloads, fell about 11%. Core Scientific (NASDAQ:CORZ) and Cipher Digital lost roughly 8% to 9%. Meanwhile, Bitcoin itself was down only about 1% through about 10 a.m. ET, signaling that investors weren't selling these stocks over crypto. It wasn't until the broader market started tumbling that Bitcoin also started sliding, down nearly 6% by about 11 a.m. ET. A big part of the worry is how quickly new data centers can be built, given the blue wave that swept through the Midterm elections. With Democrats now in charge of both chambers, investors are bracing for more oversight of an industry that many governments are already trying to regulate. In Texas, for example, one of the biggest data-center markets, the new governor-elect campaigned on pausing new data-center construction. UBS analysts put a number on the risk: If construction pauses spread, they estimate that nearly a third of the new U.S. data-center capacity expected to come online in 2028 could be delayed or lost. For companies whose growth is contingent on the supply available to meet booming demand, that's a big deal.
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