AI-led selloff deepens as Gartner warns 80% of neocloud firms won't stay independent

What happened

Wednesday's selloff broadened beyond the hot CPI print: the Nasdaq tumbled 1.9%, the S&P 500 fell 1.1%, and the small-cap Russell 2000 plunged 1.9% to its worst level in nearly six months. AI-infrastructure names led the damage — CoreWeave crashed another 15.5% with its debt below 80 cents on the dollar — after Gartner predicted that 80% of AI compute (neocloud) firms won't remain independent by 2030, saying massive AI spending is unlikely to deliver profitable returns.

Who’s affected

• Neocloud: CRWV (-15.5% Wednesday), NBIS and IREN (down 10%+). Chips/software: SMH -4%, AMD -5.7%, SNOW -6.3%, DELL -11.4% (Barclays downgrade, previously alerted), MRVL, ARM, LRCX, STX, INTC, WDC all down 4%+. Defensive winners: XLV health care +2.5% (LLY, HUM, HALO buy signals), XLE energy +0.6%.

Sources

investors.cominvestopedia.com