The one thing
Yesterday’s session answered the question left open on Monday morning: did the market read the Amodei essay as bad for all of AI, or only for part of it? Only for part of it. The Philadelphia Semiconductor Index fell 5.86%, with Lam Research down 8.29%, Marvell down 7.32% and Nvidia down 3.36%. The same session sent Alphabet up 3.22%, Microsoft up 1.97% and Meta up 2.71%. ServiceNow rose 7.41%, CrowdStrike 13.85% and Palo Alto 13.09%. The S&P 500 fell only 0.48%.
The simplest explanation came from analyst Gil Luria, speaking to Fortune. If AI progress slows, the hyperscalers can stop building and “digest what they have”, so their capex falls and their free cash flow rises. Chipmakers lose that revenue. Put simply, capex is a cost to the companies that spend it and revenue to the companies that sell into it. On Monday the market priced both sides of that at once, for the first time this cycle.
The name to look at is Oracle, because it spends on capex and still fell 3.65%, alongside CoreWeave (−6.75%). Its 10-Q shows why the market treats it as a supplier. In the August quarter free cash flow was negative $5.4bn, and Oracle sold $19.9bn of new stock through an at-the-market programme. It has also added $700m to its restructuring plan. Wednesday’s Fed decision, where a hike is widely expected, is the other half of today’s tape. Keep the two causes apart.
Sector pulse — covered names with material news
Nearly all of the counts come from one catalyst, the weekend essay, which moved names in opposite directions. The eight semis names are written up as two items and the six software names as two items. Space & mobility is a schedule change only.
Overnight & last session
Semis & equipment
The chip sell-off held all session: SOX down 5.86%, with equipment hit hardest
The premarket drop did not recover. Closing moves: Lam Research −8.29% to $273.49, Marvell −7.32% to $218.82, Intel −5.59% to $97.19, Micron −5.25% to $924.03, Broadcom −4.77% to $344.72, AMD −4.40% to $493.41 and Nvidia −3.36% to $210.96. The Philadelphia Semiconductor Index fell 5.86%. The Nasdaq Composite lost only 0.56%, to 26,186.41, because software and the hyperscalers rose. Nvidia and Micron were both indicated about 0.6% higher in early Tuesday premarket, according to a single aggregator.
The read: The order of the losses is informative. Lam, the name furthest up the supply chain, fell most. Its revenue depends on fabs that are planned years ahead against demand forecasts, so a slower frontier hits it first. Nvidia, which sells into inference demand from models already deployed, fell least. That is the order you would expect if the market is pricing future capacity additions rather than current usage. Lam said at Citi last week that every $100bn of AI data-centre capex needs $9–10bn of wafer fab equipment. On Monday the market applied that ratio in reverse.
Asia steadies: TSMC closes slightly higher in a falling Taipei; Seoul loses less
The TAIEX fell 0.77% to 45,511.49, but TSMC rose 0.21% to NT$2,385, after its ADR lost 3.52% in New York overnight to $418.01. MediaTek fell 2.85% and ASE 3.27%, while power supplier Delta Electronics rose 3.27%. Turnover was NT$603.45bn, down from NT$630.9bn on Monday. In Seoul the Kospi closed down 0.85% at 6,627.26, its fourth straight decline, with Samsung Electronics down 0.2% and SK hynix down 0.41%. That compares with a 3%-plus fall on Monday. Korean coverage again put the move down to rates and oil rather than AI. Brent traded above $107. The US 10-year yield went above 5% on Monday for the first time since October 2023, and reached 5.041% on Tuesday morning.
The read: TSMC closing higher on the day its ADR’s 3.5% fall was absorbed in Taipei is the second session in a row where the foundry has been marked down least. Two sessions do not make a trend. Still, the market seems to accept TSMC’s own framing: it supplies every customer, so a shift in spending between labs and hyperscalers does not change its wafer demand. The first hard test is September monthly sales on 8 October. Delta rising is a small sign that power is being treated as a supplier to existing data centres rather than to new ones.
Cloud & AI infrastructure
Alphabet, Microsoft and Meta rise as the market re-reads capex as optional spending; Amazon lags
Alphabet closed +3.22% at $349.39, Meta +2.71% at $665.60 and Microsoft +1.97% at $505.41. Amazon was the exception, −1.26% at $253.54. Fortune quoted analyst Gil Luria: if AI progress slows, hyperscalers can stop building and digest existing capacity, so revenue and profit can keep rising while capex falls and cash flow rises. Reports on the size of the moves differ. One Yahoo Finance article gives Meta at +7.12% and Nvidia at −8.38%, which do not match the closing prices; Fortune’s intraday figures were lower. Closing-price data are used here.
The read: This is the first session this cycle in which the market rewarded a hyperscaler for the prospect of spending less. Amazon falling is the useful exception. It carries the largest 2026 capex guide in the group, about $220bn. AWS is also a direct capacity seller to Anthropic, the lab whose CEO wrote the essay, and Amazon owns a stake in Anthropic. That makes Amazon both a buyer of capex and a supplier to the labs, and on Monday the supplier side counted for more. The same split runs through Alphabet, which also supplies Anthropic with TPUs, but Alphabet rose. Her Amazon and Google studies are the right place to test whether that difference reflects backlog mix or just the 75% of Alphabet’s revenue that comes from ads.
Oracle falls 3.65% as the 10-Q shows a $700m bigger restructuring and a $19.9bn stock sale; CoreWeave down 6.75%
Oracle closed −3.65% at $144.79. Saturday’s cancellation of Larry Ellison’s 10b5-1 plan was filed on an 8-K on Monday, and did not lift the shares. Press coverage focused on a detail in the fiscal first-quarter 10-Q. Oracle estimated its fiscal 2026 restructuring plan at up to $2.1bn as of 31 August, then added $700m after the quarter ended, for about $2.8bn in total. It recorded $167m of charges under the plan in the quarter; the income-statement restructuring line is $165m. Quartz reports the $2.1bn as charges recorded to date, but the 10-Q describes it as the plan’s estimated total cost. The same filing shows $19,909m of proceeds from common stock sold through the at-the-market programme in the quarter. That compares with operating cash flow of $23.1bn, capex of $28.5bn, $4.2bn of repayments of senior notes, term loans and other borrowings, and $1.6bn of dividends. The 10-Q also records about $11.4bn of customer prepayments with a significant financing component. CoreWeave closed −6.75% at $82.98. The Nebius close is not covered.
The read: Oracle funded its quarter by selling shares, not by borrowing. In the same quarter the founder set up a plan to sell up to 50 million shares, though he has now cancelled it. Oracle is therefore a hyperscaler whose capex is paid for by new shareholders and justified by lab contracts, which is why it trades with the suppliers. The at-the-market figure has barely been reported: one Quartz line, and an Insider Monkey comparison of Oracle and CoreWeave financing that omitted it altogether. It belongs at the top of her Oracle FY1Q27 update, which is staged but not uploaded. The draft should say plainly that the $5.4bn free-cash-flow gap was more than covered by dilution, with customer prepayments as the second funding source.
SaaS & enterprise software
Software rallies as the AI-disruption discount unwinds; Dreamforce opens today with Amodei on stage
ServiceNow closed +7.41% at $142.35, Adobe +5.30% at $265.60, Salesforce +4.73% at $259.43 and Workday +4.58% at $194.21. The iShares Expanded Tech-Software ETF rose 5.04%. Needham ($155) and BTIG ($170) raised their ServiceNow price targets before the open. Salesforce’s Dreamforce runs 15–17 September at Moscone Center, with a keynote conversation between Marc Benioff and Dario Amodei under the Salesforce–Anthropic “Claudeforce” partnership.
The read: For a year the bear case on SaaS was that frontier models would replace seat-based software. A slower frontier weakens that case, and Monday priced it. But the essay limits capability gains. It does nothing to agents built on models that are already deployed, and those are what compete with a ServiceNow workflow or a Salesforce seat. The rally is buying time, not a different ending. Her SaaS study already flags survivorship bias in its own headline, so the discipline is to wait for Amodei’s Dreamforce remarks before writing this up. He will be on stage beside the company most exposed to agent substitution, days after asking the industry to slow down.
CrowdStrike and Palo Alto jump 13–14% as the safety warning is read as security demand
CrowdStrike closed +13.85% at $235.38 and Palo Alto Networks +13.09% at $373.94. Zscaler, which is not covered, rose 16.52%. CrowdStrike was holding its Fal.Con conference, where it launched Falcon Guardian, SafeMind and an agentic identity provider. Chief executive George Kurtz pushed back on the slowdown call, at Fal.Con and on CNBC. He argued that slowing frontier development does not remove the risk, because capable frontier and open-weight models already exist. CrowdStrike has guided fiscal third-quarter revenue to $1.523–1.529bn.
The read: This is the cleanest example of the split. Cyber revenue depends on how much enterprises fear models that already exist, not on the next training run. The essay was, among other things, an admission that labs cannot fully contain their own systems, and OpenAI’s Hugging Face breach is still fresh. Two points of caution. A 13% one-day move on a narrative is not a bookings number. And her cybersecurity study notes that Palo Alto’s next 10-K will trip a data gate on purpose. The test is whether CrowdStrike’s fiscal third-quarter net new ARR shows it.
Ads & adtech
Meta rose 2.71%, as covered in the hyperscaler item above. No company news at ZETA, TTD, ROKU or NFLX. Meta Connect is 23–24 September.
Consumer platforms & commerce
Quiet. No material company news across ABNB, BKNG, UBER, SHOP or WMT.
Hardware & devices
Dell gives back half of Friday’s record rally, falling with the chips
Dell closed −5.82% at $534.28, after rising 11.98% to $567.29 on Friday on RBC’s Outperform initiation. Apple was nearly flat, up 0.24% at $333.08, ahead of iPhone 18 Pro launch-day deliveries on Friday.
The read: Yesterday’s brief proposed Dell as the control group, the name most tied to enterprise AI rather than the labs. It failed the test and fell with the suppliers. The market is not yet separating enterprise AI server demand from lab-driven demand, and Dell’s $95bn backlog did not protect it. That supports the argument for getting the FY2Q27 Dell rebuild live: the study can show what share of the backlog is tier-2 cloud and neocloud, and that share is exposed to the labs.
Space & mobility
Starship Flight 14 has slipped again, from 18 September to no earlier than 22 September, per NASASpaceflight. No reason was given. No material Tesla news.
Full-year capex guidance across the build-out
| Company | Guidance |
|---|---|
| Amazon AMZN · CY2026 | ~$220bn |
| Alphabet GOOGL · CY2026 | $195–205bn |
| Microsoft MSFT · CY2026 | ~$175bn |
| Meta META · CY2026 | $130–145bn |
| Oracle ORCL · FY2027 | $90–95bn |
| TSMC TSM · CY2026 | $60–64bn |
| CoreWeave CRWV · CY2026 | $35–39bn |
| Micron MU · FY26, net | ~$27bn |
| Intel INTC · CY2026, gross | >$20bn |
Where each name stands
This is a standing table, not a daily one. Rows change only when a name discloses something or makes a material move. Otherwise the entry carries forward from the previous edition, with the original print date shown. Rows marked New today changed in this edition. Cells are left blank rather than filled with an estimate.
| Name | Last print | Key figures from it |
|---|---|---|
| Semis & equipment | ||
| TSM | 10 Sep · Aug monthly | New today (price only). NT$514,806m, +53.3% y/y, +10.1% m/m; Jan–Aug NT$3,386,870m, +39.3%. 3Q26 guide $44.6–45.8bn at NT$32. Call only: 2026 capex $60–64bn. ADR 14 Sep $418.01, −3.52%; Taipei 15 Sep NT$2,385, +0.21% |
| NVDA | 26 Aug · FQ2’27 | New today (price only). Rev $96.2bn +106%; data centre $89.0bn +117%; GM 75.0%; GAAP EPS $2.46; FQ3 guide $108.0bn ±2%, assuming no China DC compute revenue. Hugging Face agreed 2 Sep at $12.93bn. Closed 14 Sep $210.96, −3.36% |
| AVGO | 2 Sep · FQ3’26 | New today (price only). Rev $29.591bn +86%; AI semis $16.7bn +221%; adjusted EPS $3.32; FQ4 guide ~$34.8bn with AI semis $21.7bn. Call only: FY26 AI $58bn, FY27 ~$115bn, FY28 ~$230bn. Closed 14 Sep $344.72, −4.77% |
| MU | 24 Jun · FQ3’26 | New today (price only). Rev $41,456m +346% y/y; GAAP GM 84.6%; GAAP EPS $24.67; net capex $7,084m. FQ4 guide $50.0bn ±$1.0bn at ~86% GM, moderating price increases flagged. Closed 14 Sep $924.03, −5.25%. Reports 30 Sep |
| QCOM | 8 Sep · 8-K | Custom-silicon partnership with Amazon. Item 3.02 warrant: 25,000,000 shares at $161.26, 3,750,000 vested on issuance, $60bn qualifying-payment ceiling, expiry 3 Sep 2036 |
| INTC | 11 Aug · equity | New today (price only). $20bn common offering at $95. Q2’26: rev $16.13bn +25.4%, DCAI +59%, 2026 capex >$20bn gross. DigiTimes reports ~10% PC CPU price rise, not company-confirmed. Closed 14 Sep $97.19, −5.59% |
| AMD | 8 Sep · Citi TMT | New today (price only). Call only: FY2027 data-centre revenue ~$70bn; Anthropic, Meta and OpenAI named as anchors; $29–30bn purchase commitments. Closed 14 Sep $493.41, −4.40% |
| MRVL | 27 Aug · FQ2’27 | New today (price only). Rev $2.739bn +37%; data centre $2.171bn +46%; FQ3 guide ~$3.15bn. Call only: FY27 ~$12bn, FY28 ~$18bn. Google warrant up to 58,970,907 shares at $206.58. Closed 14 Sep $218.82, −7.32%. Investor day 6 Oct |
| LRCX | 9 Sep · Citi TMT | New today (price only). Call only: CY2026 WFE “low $150bns”; $9–10bn of WFE per $100bn of AI data-centre capex. Closed 14 Sep $273.49, −8.29%, worst of the covered semis |
| KLAC | 9 Sep · Citi TMT | Call only: CY2026 WFE mid-$150bns |
| AMAT | 8 Sep · Citi TMT | Call only: rolling eight-quarter customer forecasts up every quarter |
| ASML | 8 Sep · releases | High-NA EUV collaborations with Samsung and Intel Foundry; photomask initiative with TSMC. Q3 results reported for 14 Oct (aggregator date) |
| ARM | 8 Sep · launches | Neoverse CSS N4, Physical AI ecosystem, Arm AI Portal |
| TXN | — | |
| CDNS | — | |
| SNPS | — | |
| Cloud & AI infrastructure | ||
| ORCL | 11–14 Sep · 10-Q, 8-K | New today. FQ1’27 10-Q: rev $19.3bn +30%; OCI $7.4bn +121%; RPO $664bn; OCF $23,103m; capex $28,499m; FCF −$5,396m; ATM common stock proceeds $19,909m; senior note repayments $4,202m; restructuring plan up to $2.1bn at 31 Aug plus $700m added after quarter end (~$2.8bn), Q1 charges $167m. FY27 capex guide $90–95bn. Ellison plan cancellation filed on 8-K 14 Sep. Closed 14 Sep $144.79, −3.65% |
| MSFT | 10 Sep · report | New today (price only). Bloomberg: internal plan for ~38GW of capacity in 2032 from ~12GW, excluding neocloud rentals; >$50bn capex guided for FQ1’27. FQ4’26: rev $90.0bn +18%, Azure +43%. CY2026 capex ~$175bn, guided 29 Jul after an accounting change (see chart note). Closed 14 Sep $505.41, +1.97% |
| GOOGL | 9 Sep · Finland | New today (price only). €13bn AI infrastructure 2027–28; 22-year Loviisa nuclear PPA with Fortum. Q2’26: cloud +82%, FCF −$5.9bn, buybacks paused. Call only: 2026 capex $195–205bn. Closed 14 Sep $349.39, +3.22% |
| AMZN | 9 Sep · bond | New today (price only). Debut £4.25bn sterling bond; 2026 issuance above $80bn. Q2’26: net sales $200.6bn +20%, AWS $42.2bn +37%. Call only: 2026 capex ~$220bn. Closed 14 Sep $253.54, −1.26%, the only hyperscaler down |
| CRWV | 11 Aug · Q2’26 | New today (price only). Rev $2,575m +112%; net loss $626m; backlog ~$104bn; CY2026 capex $35–39bn; debt ~$35bn; DDTL 5.5 $2.6bn closed Aug. Closed 14 Sep $82.98, −6.75% |
| NET | 9 Sep · product | OpenAI-powered vulnerability service inside Cloudflare Managed Defense |
| VRT | 2 Sep · M&A | UtilityInnovation Group for ~$1.45bn cash plus up to $1.15bn earnout; 2026 guide ~24% sales growth |
| GEV | 9 Sep | Lead bidder on an HVDC grid project; new CFO announced |
| SaaS & enterprise software | ||
| CRM | 26 Aug · FQ2’27 | New today. Rev $11.3bn +11% incl. $456m Informatica; cRPO $33.5bn +14%; non-GAAP op margin 34.1%; Agentforce ARR $1.5bn. Dreamforce 15–17 Sep with Benioff–Amodei keynote. Closed 14 Sep $259.43, +4.73% |
| NOW | 22 Jul · Q2’26 | New today. Subscription revenue growth 24–25%, guidance raised; AI ACV $1bn. Sweep acquisition 8 Sep. PT raises 14 Sep: Needham $155, BTIG $170. Closed 14 Sep $142.35, +7.41% |
| ADBE | 10 Sep · FQ3’26 | New today (price only). Rev $6.76bn +13%; non-GAAP EPS $6.13; Total Adobe ARR $27.5bn +11.2%; FY guide $26.576–26.626bn. CEO succession effective 1 Dec. Closed 14 Sep $265.60, +5.30% |
| WDAY | 14 Sep · session | New today (price only). Closed $194.21, +4.58% |
| CRWD | 14 Sep · Fal.Con | New today. Falcon Guardian, SafeMind, agentic identity provider launched. FQ3 guide rev $1.523–1.529bn. Retained by OpenAI to validate the Hugging Face incident analysis. Closed 14 Sep $235.38, +13.85% |
| PANW | 1 Sep · FQ4/FY26 | New today (price only). Q4 rev $3.41bn +34%; NGS ARR $9.10bn +63%; FY27 guide $14.10–14.20bn. PAN-OS CVE-2026-0310 disclosed 9 Sep, found internally, no known exploitation. Closed 14 Sep $373.94, +13.09% |
| SNOW | 2 Sep · FQ2’27 | Product revenue $1.49bn +37%; FY product revenue outlook ~$6.07bn |
| MDB | 1 Sep · FQ2’27 | Rev ~$688m +30% |
| DDOG | 6 Aug · Q2’26 | Rev ~$1.12bn +36%; FY guidance raised |
| SAP | 8 Sep · press | Bloomberg: supervisory board members believe SAP needs an AI breakthrough within months |
| HUBS | — | |
| Ads & adtech | ||
| META | 8 Sep · launch | New today (price only). Muse personal AI agent; free tier capped at 100m tokens a week plus reported $20 / $100 tiers. Q2’26: rev $60.801bn +28%. Call only: 2026 capex $130–145bn. Closed 14 Sep $665.60, +2.71%. Connect 23–24 Sep |
| TTD | 4 Sep · 8-K | 15% headcount reduction (~575 roles), charges up to $51m; removed from the S&P 500 |
| ROKU | 9 Sep · 8-K | DOJ Second Request on the $22bn Fox acquisition |
| ZETA | 8–9 Sep · conferences | 2025 net revenue retention 120%; average deal size up 40% |
| NFLX | 16 Jul · Q2’26 | Q3 results reported for 20 Oct (aggregator date) |
| Consumer platforms & commerce | ||
| UBER | 10 Sep · Form 4 | CEO bought 141,000 shares at $70.9642 weighted average, ~$10m; holds 1,367,100 directly. COO bought 70,000 shares, ~$5.31m |
| BKNG | 9 Sep · court | EU General Court upheld the veto of the €1.63bn eTraveli acquisition |
| ABNB | 8 Sep · session | Upgraded to Outperform at Raymond James. Q2’26 revenue $3.6bn +17% |
| SHOP | 8 Sep · session | Fell 7–8% with no identified catalyst, after a more than 25% August |
| WMT | 20 Aug | $2.9bn tariff refund |
| Hardware & devices | ||
| DELL | 14 Sep · session | New today (price only). Closed 14 Sep $534.28, −5.82%, after +11.98% to $567.29 on 11 Sep (RBC Outperform, PT $640). FQ2’27: rev $47.0bn +58%; AI server revenue $16.4bn; AI orders $60.9bn; backlog $95.0bn; FY27 guide ~$192bn. ~$4bn of senior notes to refinance Oct 2026 maturities |
| AAPL | 12–14 Sep · pre-orders | iPhone 18 Pro US delivery estimates by 14 Sep: Pro 29 Sep–6 Oct, Pro Max 6–13 Oct (2TB still on launch day); launch day 18 Sep. iPhone Duo pre-orders 16 Oct, ships 23 Oct. Closed 14 Sep $333.08, +0.24% |
| CSCO | 9 Sep | Middle East AI partnership with AMD reported |
| Space & mobility | ||
| SPCX | 14 Sep · schedule | New today. Starship Flight 14 NET 22 Sep (was 18 Sep), first orbital attempt, no catch. Data-centre build slowdown and leadership reshuffle reported 9–10 Sep. 30 Sep deadline on a reported $920m-per-month Google compute arrangement. First 10-Q 4 Aug; pre-February-2026 figures retrospectively recast |
| TSLA | 8–9 Sep · sessions | FSD cleared in Slovenia; paid Cybercab rides in Austin from 3 Sep. Q2’26: rev $28.24bn, deliveries 480,126, operating income $398m, FCF −$1.09bn. Roadster event date still reported inconsistently |
On the calendar
- Tue 15 – Thu 17 SepSalesforce Dreamforce, San Francisco, with a Benioff–Amodei keynote conversation. The session time is not confirmed. It will be Amodei’s first big stage since the essay.
- Wed 16 Sep, 15:00 BRTFOMC decision (14:00 ET), with the chair’s press conference at 15:30 BRT. A 25bp hike is about 93% priced on CME FedWatch as of Tuesday. New dot plot.
- Fri 18 SepiPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max launch-day deliveries.
- Tue 22 Sep, 09:15 BRTStarship Flight 14, no earlier than this date (12:15 UTC), the first orbital attempt. Slipped from 18 September; 23 September is the backup.
- Wed 23 – Thu 24 SepMeta Connect, Menlo Park, confirmed on Meta’s own site.
- Tue 29 SepOpenAI DevDay, Fort Mason, San Francisco.
- Wed 30 SepDeadline on the reported $920m-per-month SpaceX–Google compute arrangement.
- Wed 30 Sep, 17:30 BRTMicron fiscal fourth-quarter 2026 results, 14:30 Mountain. The first reported numbers from a covered chip name since the essay.
- Tue 6 OctMarvell investor day.
- Thu 8 Oct, 02:30 BRTTSMC September monthly sales (13:30 Taipei), confirmed on the company’s financial calendar. Completes 3Q26 against the $44.6–45.8bn guide.
- Wed 14 OctASML third-quarter 2026 results, per data-provider listings.
- Thu 15 Oct (est.)TSMC third-quarter 2026 results, a forecast date that is not yet on the company calendar.
- Fri 16 OctiPhone Duo pre-orders open.
- Tue 20 OctNetflix third-quarter 2026 results, after the close, per data-provider listings.
- Sun 25 – Wed 28 OctOracle AI World, Las Vegas, the first big Oracle event since the at-the-market sale was disclosed.
Story worth owning
Payer or payee: Monday sorted the coverage by who writes the capex cheque, and Oracle was put with the companies that cash it
For two years AI capex has been read as good news on both sides: the hyperscalers were “investing” and the suppliers were “growing”. On Monday the market priced the two sides as opposites for the first time. The companies that write the cheques rose (Alphabet +3.2%, Meta +2.7%, Microsoft +2.0%). The companies that cash them fell (Lam −8.3%, Marvell −7.3%, Micron −5.3%, Dell −5.8%). Two names did not fit neatly. Oracle writes the cheques and fell 3.65%, and Amazon writes the largest ones and fell 1.3%.
The piece nobody independent has written sorts every covered name by two filed figures, not by sector. The first is capex as a share of operating cash flow: how much of the build-out is self-funded. The second is how the gap is financed: debt, customer prepayments, or new equity. On the first, Oracle spent $28.5bn against $23.1bn of operating cash flow. On the second, it covered the gap with $19.9bn of stock sold at market, in the same quarter the founder had a 50-million-share sale plan in place. That figure has barely been reported. CoreWeave funds itself with delayed-draw term loans backed by customer contracts. Alphabet had negative free cash flow in Q2 and paused buybacks, but its core business still pays for the build-out. Place each name on those two axes and the pattern from Monday’s session drops out. The more a company’s capex is funded by other people’s money, the more it traded like a supplier.
Her staged studies already hold the inputs: cash-flow statements for Oracle, CoreWeave, Amazon, Alphabet, Microsoft and Meta, and the compute-deal register in Frontier Labs. The chart is a scatter of about ten points, each needing two ratios taken from filings. It also gives a testable prediction: if a slowdown actually arrives, names should re-rate in the order the scatter implies. The Oracle FY1Q27 update, staged but not uploaded, is the natural place to launch it, with the at-the-market figure as the headline.
Sources
- Wall Street’s AI doomsday trade is here: chipmakers sink while hyperscalers gain — Fortune, 14 Sep 2026
- Today’s Market Recap: AI Chip Stocks Plunge as Nvidia, Micron, Broadcom Tumble — TradingKey, 14 Sep 2026
- Stock market today: futures retreat ahead of Fed meeting amid AI safety fears — Yahoo Finance, 15 Sep 2026
- Stock Market Today (Sept. 15, 2026): Dow futures slide as oil prices surge and Treasury yields hit 2007 highs — TheStreet, 15 Sep 2026
- Meta, Alphabet and Microsoft Rise While Nvidia Falls After Three AI Chiefs Call For Slowing Down — Yahoo Finance, 14 Sep 2026
- Chip Stocks Tumble as AI Pacing Call Reaches Beyond Memory — 24/7 Wall St., 14 Sep 2026
- Daily price history: NVDA, AMD, AVGO, MU, INTC, MRVL, LRCX, TSM, MSFT, GOOGL, META, AMZN, ORCL, CRWV, NOW, ADBE, CRM, WDAY, CRWD, PANW, DELL, AAPL — StockAnalysis, accessed 15 Sep 2026
- Oracle Slides 5% as Layoff Costs Outweigh Ellison’s Canceled $7.5B Stock Sale — 24/7 Wall St., 14 Sep 2026
- Oracle expands 2026 layoff plan by $700 million amid AI costs — Quartz via Yahoo Finance, 14 Sep 2026
- Oracle Form 10-Q, quarter ended 31 Aug 2026 — SEC EDGAR, 11 Sep 2026
- Oracle Form 8-K, Item 8.01 — cancellation of Ellison 10b5-1 plan — SEC EDGAR, 14 Sep 2026
- Oracle Just Showed a Less Painful Way to Finance AI Clouds. That’s Awkward for CoreWeave — Insider Monkey via Yahoo Finance, 11 Sep 2026
- ServiceNow Climbs as Software Sidesteps AI Selloff — 24/7 Wall St., 14 Sep 2026
- NOW, INTU, ADBE, CRM Stocks Surge As AI Pacing Debate Hammers Chips — Stocktwits, 14 Sep 2026
- Cybersecurity Stocks Surge as AI Safety Warnings Spark Security Bid — 24/7 Wall St., 14 Sep 2026
- CrowdStrike Skyrockets 14% As AI Fears Send Cybersecurity Stocks Surging — Forbes, 14 Sep 2026
- Taiwan shares close lower as tech stocks fall on AI concerns — Focus Taiwan, 15 Sep 2026
- Taiwan Stock Market Index — Trading Economics, accessed 15 Sep 2026
- KOSPI Falls 0.85% to Close at 6,627.26 — Seoul Economic Daily, 15 Sep 2026
- Kospi falls for fourth day as Fed rate fears and oil prices weigh — Korea JoongAng Daily, 15 Sep 2026
- Dreamforce 2026 — Salesforce, accessed 15 Sep 2026
- Dreamforce 2026 Guide: Dates, Themes, and What to Expect — UC Today, 2026
- Ship 42 wraps chopsticks tests, Flight 14 moves to NET Sept. 22 — NASASpaceFlight, 14 Sep 2026
- Save the Date: Meta Connect 2026 — Meta, 12 May 2026
- Announcing OpenAI DevDay 2026 — OpenAI, 2026
- Oracle AI World 2026 — Oracle, accessed 15 Sep 2026
- FOMC September 2026 odds for a rate hike — Yahoo Finance, Sep 2026
- CoreWeave investor news (DDTL 4.0, 5.0 and 5.5 facilities) — CoreWeave investor relations, accessed 15 Sep 2026
- Anthropic reportedly signs $517 billion in compute deals — The Decoder, citing The Information, Sep 2026
Carried forward from previous editions, for the standing figures reused in the capex chart and the coverage table:
- TSMC August 2026 Revenue Report — TSMC investor relations, 10 Sep 2026
- TSMC Financial Calendar — TSMC investor relations, accessed 14 Sep 2026
- CoreWeave Reports Strong Second Quarter 2026 Results — CoreWeave investor relations, 11 Aug 2026
- Qualcomm Form 8-K, Item 3.02 — Amazon warrant — SEC EDGAR, 8 Sep 2026
- Broadcom Third Quarter Fiscal Year 2026 Financial Results — Broadcom investor relations, 2 Sep 2026
- Meta Reports Second Quarter 2026 Results — Meta investor relations, 29 Jul 2026
- Alphabet second-quarter 2026 results and raised capex guidance — CNBC, 22 Jul 2026
- Microsoft FY2026 Q4 earnings materials — Microsoft investor relations, 29 Jul 2026
- Micron record results for the third quarter of fiscal 2026 — Micron investor relations, 24 Jun 2026
- Intel upsize and pricing of the $20bn common stock offering — Intel investor relations, 11 Aug 2026
- Dell stock jumps on RBC initiation — CNBC, 11 Sep 2026
- iPhone 18 Pro pre-order wait times — MacRumors, 14 Sep 2026
All figures are as reported by companies, their investor-relations releases, SEC filings or the news sources listed above. They have not been independently verified against audited statements. Closing prices for Monday 14 September come from end-of-day price history. Tuesday premarket readings are indicative, taken from sources that disagree, and will be stale by the 10:30 BRT open. Many capex and forward-revenue figures come from earnings calls and investor conferences rather than filed releases, and are marked “call only”. Guidance ranges and fiscal-year definitions differ between companies and are not like-for-like. Rows in “Where each name stands” with no new disclosure are carried forward from previous editions. Before publication, an independent verification pass checked fourteen groups of figures against second sources. Every closing price matched. It corrected four: Microsoft’s capex framing (~$175bn is the July guide, not a press figure), the wording of Kurtz’s comment (pushback, not a prediction), Oracle’s restructuring labels, and the 10-year yield date (highest since October 2023 on Monday, since 2007 only on Tuesday). It also confirmed that Meta rose 2.71%, not 7.12%. Nothing here is investment advice. Prepared for internal research use at CoreValue Research.
