Nvidia sheds almost $450 billion in a day as the AI trade cracks

Nvidia lost almost $450 billion in market cap on Thursday as the chipmaker and Qualcomm both dropped more than 9%, pushing the Nasdaq down 5.5% to its worst day since April 2025, CNBC reports. AMD, Micron and Applied Materials posted double-digit losses, and CoreWeave fell for a second day. Qualcomm added fuel with a disappointing forecast, but the trigger was political: the states with the most ambitious AI data-center plans turned blue, and voters sided against data centers in all but one of 41 local ballot measures across 10 states, Ballotpedia and CNBC found; the exception was Harwood, North Dakota. Meta president Dina Powell McCormick told a Wall Street Journal conference that building data centers is "going to be harder" after the elections. Rising rates, ballooning capital needs and a Democratic Congress now weigh on every company tied to AI infrastructure. The AI trade just had a very bad Thursday.