A brief burst of optimism across global technology markets evaporated on Friday as chip stocks resumed their sell-off, one day after memory chipmaker Micron Technology had lifted the sector with a set of results that stunned even the most bullish analysts. Nasdaq futures led Wall Street lower, pulling technology indices in Europe and Asia with them, as investors who had cheered Micron's numbers on Thursday reconsidered in the cold light of a volatile week.
Micron shed around 5% in premarket trading on Friday, giving back a portion of the 15% gain it had posted the session before. Intel and Advanced Micro Devices each fell over 3%, while Nvidia — the world's most closely watched AI chipmaker — slid 1.4%. The pattern was familiar: a sharp, sentiment-driven recovery followed almost immediately by renewed doubt.
Micron's numbers were extraordinary. The doubts are too.
Micron's fiscal third-quarter results, published Wednesday after the US market closed, were remarkable by any measure. Revenue reached $41.46 billion, more than quadrupling from $9.3 billion in the same quarter a year earlier, with gross margins — the share of revenue left after production costs — climbing to nearly 85%. The company then guided for roughly $50 billion in revenue for its current quarter, a figure that left analysts' consensus estimate of $43.58 billion looking conservative.
“"We get visibility on our demand — it's committed volume that we can be confident about making our investments." — Mark Murphy, Micron CFO”
The driving force behind those numbers is High Bandwidth Memory, or HBM — a specialised type of chip that sits directly on AI accelerators used in data centres. Micron is one of only three companies globally capable of manufacturing HBM at scale, and its entire 2026 supply is already sold under contract. AI data centres require enormous volumes of memory, and that demand has squeezed the supply available for smartphones, PCs, and other consumer electronics, pushing memory prices sharply higher across the board.
The bigger question: when does $700 billion in spending pay off?
The week's turbulence is not really about Micron. It reflects a broader anxiety running through global markets: the five largest hyperscalers — Amazon, Alphabet, Microsoft, Meta, and Oracle — are collectively guiding toward somewhere between $635 billion and $700 billion in capital expenditure in 2026 alone, the vast majority directed at AI infrastructure. That is an extraordinary commitment, and investors are increasingly asking how quickly it can generate returns. Large technology companies including Alphabet and Amazon fell earlier in the week on doubts about exactly this question.
“"Investors weigh elevated AI-driven valuations and growing uncertainty over how soon heavy data-centre investments would yield profits." — Reuters”
Also grabbing attention on Friday was a major deal in the chip sector: ON Semiconductor announced it had agreed to acquire interface chip specialist Synaptics in an all-stock transaction valued at roughly $7 billion. Synaptics shares rose sharply on the news, while Onsemi dropped more than 14% as investors weighed the cost of the acquisition. The deal reflects the consolidation pressure building across a semiconductor industry racing to position itself for an AI-defined future — even as markets debate how long that future will take to arrive.
What to watch next
A final reading of US consumer sentiment for June was due later on Friday, with the monthly jobs report scheduled for the following week. Both will be scrutinised for signals about the health of an economy that is simultaneously funding the most ambitious infrastructure build-out in technology history and navigating elevated interest rates. For international investors, the week has been a reminder that enthusiasm for AI remains intense — but that enthusiasm and certainty are not the same thing.
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