Micron Technology closed down 8.85% on Tuesday with a trading volume of $47.547 billion, ranking first in US stock turnover. US semiconductor stocks broadly declined, following the weak trend seen in Asian and European markets. This movement followed a massive sell-off in Asian markets. In South Korea, SK hynix closed down 14.65%, and Samsung Electronics fell over 13%. Other AI-related stocks also saw heavy selling, with Samsung SDI down 11.37%, LG Innotek down 16.29%, Seoul Semiconductor down 8.78%, and LG Chem closing down 7.5%. Japanese chip stocks also fell on Tuesday. Tokyo Electron closed down 10.96%, Advantest fell over 10%, and SoftBank dropped 4.43%. Japanese computer memory manufacturer Kioxia saw its stock price plummet over 18%
SanDisk closed down 14.25% with a trading volume of $28.185 billion, ranking second. The stock has now fallen for three consecutive trading days, each with a decline of over 10%, for a cumulative drop of nearly 32%. The current price is more than half of its June high. The stock closed at $2335 on June 25th. Driven by an AI-induced shortage of memory chips, the stock had surged over 850% by mid-2026. In the first half of 2026, capital poured into the memory chip sector. However, in recent weeks, investor sentiment has turned cautious, leading to successive sell-offs in the memory sector, with the overall semiconductor chip market also weakening.
NVIDIA closed up 0.25% with a trading volume of $25.96 billion, ranking third. On July 27th, NVIDIA announced an agreement to invest approximately $5 billion in Safe Superintelligence, an AI startup founded by former OpenAI chief scientist Ilya Sutskever.
Apple closed up 0.94% with a trading volume of $17.227 billion, ranking fourth. Apple's market value touched $5 trillion for the first time during Tuesday's trading session, just one day after overtaking NVIDIA to become the most valuable listed company. The iPhone maker is set to report quarterly earnings on Thursday, and its stock is up 25% this year, outperforming other large-cap tech peers. The stock hit a high of $342.89 on Tuesday before paring gains. While hyperscalers like Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, and Microsoft have invested hundreds of billions in capital expenditure for AI infrastructure this year, Apple's capital expenditure has remained low, using cloud infrastructure and AI technology from Google. Last year, Apple lagged its trillion-dollar peers in market value as investors worried it had missed the AI boom by controlling investment and delaying the launch of a long-awaited upgraded Siri, which will be released this fall alongside new iPhone hardware. However, the narrative has recently flipped due to concerns that aggressive tech spenders are borrowing heavily and generating negative cash flow with no clear path to lucrative returns.
Advanced Micro Devices closed down 8.15% with a trading volume of $16.365 billion, ranking fifth. Despite AMD announcing a collaboration agreement with Core Scientific for up to 2.5 gigawatts of AI data centers on Monday, the stock fell sharply on Tuesday, dragged down by the overall weakness in the chip sector. The decline reflects a broader "bleeding" effect in the AI hardware sector. Influenced by factors including renowned investor Michael Burry shorting the semiconductor sector, market doubts about the AI financing model, and increased risk aversion ahead of the Federal Reserve meeting, the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index fell 2.23% on Monday, with AMD down 5.17%. As capital clearly flows into software and application layers, investors question the sustainability of massive capital expenditure, putting significant pressure on pure hardware concept stocks.
Intel closed down 5.86% with a trading volume of $12.835 billion, ranking sixth. US semiconductor stocks generally fell on Tuesday.
Alphabet Class A shares closed up 2.19% with a trading volume of $9.579 billion, ranking tenth. On Tuesday, reports indicated that Google has committed to providing up to $44 billion in guarantees for data center lease projects. The company will use financial tools to promote its self-developed AI chips while controlling its on-balance-sheet asset size.
Seagate Technology closed down 8.53% with a trading volume of $6.175 billion, ranking sixteenth. Seagate reported fourth fiscal quarter revenue of $3.629 billion after Tuesday's close, above the market estimate of $3.485 billion. The company forecast first fiscal quarter revenue of $4.0 to $4.2 billion, compared to the market estimate of $3.749 billion.
SK hynix closed down 8.98% with a trading volume of $5.867 billion, ranking seventeenth. After falling below its IPO price on Monday, the stock continued its decline on Tuesday. On Tuesday morning local time in South Korea, the KOSPI index plunged 11% intraday, with SK hynix down over 14% and Samsung Electronics down more than 13%. Notably, SK hynix (SKHY.US), which recently completed its US IPO, had already signaled risks: its American Depositary Receipts (ADRs) closed at $143.02 in the previous session, officially breaking below the IPO price of $149. This once-hot AI memory stock, heavily sought after by global capital, fell into the "break below IPO price" predicament shortly after listing, serving as an early warning signal for the semiconductor sell-off in South Korea. As a key core supplier of NVIDIA's HBM high-bandwidth memory chips, SK hynix is one of the companies most directly benefiting from and with the greatest earnings flexibility in the current global AI infrastructure investment boom. This makes its stock price extremely sensitive to marginal changes in industry sentiment; any shifts in AI demand or supply patterns can directly trigger significant capital inflows or outflows.
Corning closed down 12.10% with a trading volume of $5.517 billion, ranking eighteenth. Corning's stock fell sharply on Tuesday, primarily due to the company's next-quarter revenue guidance falling short of market expectations, raising concerns about its growth prospects. Although Corning's quarterly revenue and earnings per share exceeded expectations, and demand for optical fiber driven by AI data center construction was strong, the company's projected core revenue range of $4.9 to $5.0 billion is below the Wall Street consensus estimate of $5.0 billion. This slight gap, against the backdrop of recent market caution towards AI hardware stocks, was amplified as a negative signal and dragged down the entire optical communication sector. Additionally, Corning's stock had risen significantly previously due to the AI boom, accumulating substantial profit-taking pressure, which exacerbated the post-earnings decline.
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