There’s one thing scaring investors today, and it’s not Halloween.
As of this writing, some of the biggest tech stocks are getting hammered in premarket trading, just one day after Google owner Alphabet Inc. saw its own stock price suffer the worst one-day decline in its history. Here’s what you need to know.
Nasdaq lower as tech stocks sink
It’s shaping up to be nothing short of a bloodbath of a week for some stocks.
Yesterday, Alphabet Inc. (Nasdaq: GOOG), parent company of search giant and AI hyperscaler Google, saw its shares drop 12.29% in a single session after reporting its most recent quarterly results.
It was the largest single-day post-earnings share price drop in Google’s history, with more than half a trillion in value wiped out in a single session.
The main driver: a significant increase in Google’s negative cash flow amid its AI buildout. Moreover, revenue for its all-important Search division came in below expectations, fueling fears of disruption by AI chatbots.
Today, Google’s bleeding has stopped—mostly. Currently, GOOG shares are down about eight-tenths of a percent.
But now, other Big Tech stocks are getting hammered.
Intel down 25%
The hardest hit is chipmaker Intel Corporation (Nasdaq: INTC), whose shares are currently down a staggering 25% in premarket trading. Intel’s share price drop comes after it reported its Q3 2026 quarterly results yesterday.
Investors did not love the results. Specifically, as noted by CNBC, Intel issued a weaker-than-expected outlook for its current Q4, driven primarily by a slowdown in PC sales.
The average cost of a personal computer is surging, thanks to skyrocketing memory prices, and it turns out—shocker—that when PC prices go up, consumers want to buy fewer of them.
Intel expects its Q4 revenue to come in between $15 and $16 billion, well below the $17 billion analysts had expected.
Reddit down 20%
Then there is Reddit Inc. (NYSE: RDDT). The social media site reported its Q3 2026 quarterly results yesterday, too, after which its stock price plummeted.
As of the time of this writing, RDDT shares are down nearly 20% on the news that its search referral traffic—mainly from Google—is “down meaningfully” in the current Q4.
As Google embraces AI search results, fewer Google users are either seeing Reddit referral links or clicking on them. This has led to less traffic to Reddit.
In response, Reddit says it will now institute a policy where a person must be logged into Reddit to see its content.
Amazon down 6.2%
Finally, there is Amazon.com, Inc. (Nasdaq: AMZN). The e-commerce giant, too, reported its Q3 results yesterday, and today, its stock price is down significantly—about 6.3% as of the time of this writing.
Amazon’s revenue came in at just under $202 billion, and its EPS was $1.89. Those figures, as CNBC notes, were below what analysts expected.
But the company also posted negative free cash flow of $42.4 billion for the trailing 12 months, largely thanks to its continued capital expenditures on its AI buildouts. (Google’s negative free cash flow announcement a day earlier is what caused the search giant’s stock to plummet this week).
The sinking of Intel, Reddit, and Amazon stocks this morning has helped spur a broader premarket sell-off in tech stocks, sending the tech-heavy Nasdaq futures down 2.4% and S&P 500 futures down 1%.
An AI reckoning?
There’s one common thread driving the negative news Amazon, Reddit, and Intel posted yesterday: AI.
For Amazon, its AI buildout is leaving the company with significant negative free cash flow, even as it continues its massive capital expenditures on its hyperscaling ambitions.
For Reddit, Google’s embrace of AI overviews and AI answers has caused a significant decline in search referrals to the social media site.
For Intel, the rising cost of PCs, driven by RAM-hungry data centers that are driving RAM prices sky-high, is causing consumers to abandon or delay plans to buy new computers.
Does this mean that an investor-led AI reckoning is upon us?
It’s too early to tell. But this week’s stock price falls for Google, Amazon, Intel, and Reddit show that investors are becoming increasingly concerned about the impact that artificial intelligence is having on companies’ bottom lines and businesses.
Specifically, for hyperscalers like Google and Amazon, investors are starting to want to see a return on investment.
Google and Amazon might have the know-how on how to build great AI products, but investors are increasingly worried no one has cracked the way to make AI profitable.
The hundreds of billions that tech giants are spending on AI buildouts—mainly in the form of data centers—will need to be paid back eventually. And if those buildouts are causing negative free cash flow, that leaves investors worried about how these massive tech companies plan to pay their bills when they come due.
