October's AI sell-off
AI stocks fell through October as investors asked when the money spent on AI will pay off. Intel lost 45%, CoreWeave 38% and Alphabet 18%. The same companies are among the biggest backers of private AI.
AI stocks sold off in October, led by Intel at −45%
Share price change since 30 September · 30 October intraday
Source: Yahoo Finance · Dealroom calculations
Why AI stocks fell
On 8 October, a report put OpenAI's annualised revenue at about $50B, below the $68–70B that had circulated. Nvidia, Oracle and CoreWeave fell the same day. CoreWeave, which rents out Nvidia chips, is down 38% for the month.
In mid-October, investors turned on how AI data centres are paid for, much of it with debt. The 20 most valuable AI and chip stocks lost more than $1 trillion in one week.
Results week made it worse. Alphabet fell 12% on 29 October as AI spending rose and search advertising slowed. Intel fell 29% on 30 October after a weaker fourth-quarter outlook than analysts expected.
The falling stocks back private AI: Nvidia joined 97 AI rounds in 2026
Including their venture arms
Source: Dealroom.co · share prices Yahoo Finance
Those bets include the largest rounds ever raised. Nvidia, Amazon and Microsoft joined OpenAI's $122B round in March. Alphabet and Amazon joined Anthropic's $65B Series H in May. Intel and Intel Capital joined 11 AI rounds, including SambaNova and Xsight Labs.
37% of VC in 2026 went to rounds with Nvidia, Alphabet, Amazon or Microsoft
Share of global VC funding · full round size
Source: Dealroom.co
What this means
Three deals carry most of that money: OpenAI's round and Anthropic's two 2026 rounds make up $217B of the $312B. Without them, the four still joined rounds worth 15% of global VC, up from 9% in 2024. If Big Tech pulls back on AI spending, private AI loses its largest backers.