The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 1,833.06 points, or 3.44%, to 51,523.06. The S&P 500 lost 334.89 points, or 4.36%, to 7,353.73, while the Nasdaq fell 1,421.52 points to 24,315.

“It's a reconsideration of yesterday,” said JJ Kinahan, senior vice president at CBOE Global Markets. He pointed to votes in municipalities against allowing data centers to be built locally, saying investors had looked past national headlines.

After two years of rapid tech-stock gains, expectations for AI profits have climbed to levels that may be difficult to meet. Qualcomm’s results, reported late Wednesday, highlighted pressure on its handset business: higher memory-component and other material costs squeezed margins, while data-center growth did not fully make up the difference. The company has long supplied chips to Apple and other smartphone makers.

“Qualcomm's earnings touched it off,” Kinahan said, adding that investors were again asking what companies were generating after spending heavily on AI. British chipmaker Arm Holdings also fell sharply, despite quarterly revenue growth of 27%, after its outlook disappointed some investors.

The reports helped trigger a selloff in chip stocks during Asian trading. South Korea’s Kospi fell 5.3% and ended 41% below its June peak. The index remains up about 28% for 2026, though that gain offered little comfort in markets moving at what the source described as AI-era speed.