Nasdaq futures fall more than 2% as Amazon and Intel deepen AI spending fears

Wall Street’s technology selloff deepened before the opening bell on October 30, 2026. Nasdaq-100 futures fell 2.41% as Amazon’s spending outlook and Intel’s cash-burn warning sharpened concerns about the cost of building AI infrastructure. The retreat followed Alphabet’s steep slide a day earlier, putting the cash behind technology growth under fresh scrutiny.

The pressure was concentrated in technology rather than spread evenly across the market. At 7:14 a.m. Eastern time, S&P 500 futures were down 1.03%, while Dow futures rose 0.17%. Those were premarket readings, not closing results. They captured investors’ initial response to earnings that renewed questions about how quickly large infrastructure bills would produce returns.

Three companies, different pressure points

Amazon shares fell 6.3% in Reuters’ premarket snapshot after the company reported a sharp third-quarter cash outflow. It also signaled another increase in capital expenditure next year, on top of already elevated spending. For investors assessing the AI buildout, the earnings update paired a current cash drain with the prospect of a still larger investment bill ahead.

Intel’s decline was much sharper: more than 25% before the open. The chipmaker warned it would burn cash this year, citing weak demand for personal computers, manufacturing bottlenecks and heavy spending to expand production. Its warning was not simply about the cost of AI. Weakness in an existing hardware market and constraints inside its factories were also weighing on the business.

Alphabet had already delivered the previous session’s shock. Shares fell more than 12% on October 29, erasing about $500 billion in market value, CNN reported. Investors were responding to both slower growth in Google’s search-advertising business and increased AI spending. That combination put pressure on the company’s established revenue engine at the same time as its investment demands were rising.

About $300 billionAmazon and Intel combined

Reuters estimated the two companies would lose about $300 billion in combined market value if their premarket declines held. This was a conditional estimate, not a realized closing loss.

Cloud growth meets the cash bill

The earnings picture was not uniformly weak. Swissquote Bank senior analyst Ipek Ozkardeskaya described cloud growth as strong, but emphasized how much companies were spending to deliver it. Amazon, Google, Microsoft and Meta together spent more than $200 billion in the third quarter alone, she said. Her assessment drew a distinction between expanding sales and the cash required to support them.

Cash-flow results also separated the companies. Meta reported cash burn in the September quarter, while Microsoft delivered a large cash-flow beat, according to Reuters. The contrast complicates any blanket judgment about AI investment: companies facing the same scrutiny over infrastructure spending were not producing the same cash outcomes in their latest results.

Ozkardeskaya identified financing costs as a further risk. Higher costs could absorb more of the cash companies generate, leaving less available for expansion and debt repayment, she warned. That is a concern about the money left after financing obligations—not just whether customers want more cloud computing. Reuters reported that several companies had tapped bond markets to help fund their AI investments.

A bruising month, but not a uniform retreat

Friday’s selling extended into other semiconductor shares. Nvidia was down 3% and AMD fell 8.7% in premarket trading. Yet the longer market picture was mixed: the S&P 500 and Nasdaq were still on course for weekly gains. The Nasdaq was nevertheless set to end a two-month winning streak in October, while the S&P 500 and Dow remained on track for monthly gains.

Not everyone read the correction as a verdict against AI’s prospects. Paul Stanley, managing director at Arca, said in a Friday note cited by CNN that the AI trade was “down, but not out.” He argued that development remained at an early stage and that pullbacks were to be expected. That was an investment judgment, rather than evidence that the spending would ultimately pay off.