US stocks fall again amid worries over AI

Wall Street stocks fell early Friday, extending a pullback amid worries that a massive build-out of artificial intelligence infrastructure won't pay off. Unease about lofty spending on data centers continued to churn after earnings from Meta raised fears that tech giants might sell their own stock to fund the spending spree. All three major indices were lower early Friday. But in a shift from recent sessions, the Nasdaq was outperforming the other two indices. About 10 minutes into trading, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 1.0 percent at 52,322.22. The broad-based S&P 500 dropped 0.5 percent to 7,625.19, while the tech-rich Nasdaq Composite Index declined 0.4 percent to 25,915.39. Large tech companies including Meta and Amazon were lower, while some chip companies such as Micron and AMD advanced. Markets may be heading towards greater discernment of AI-linked equities, said a note from David Morrison, senior market analyst at Trade Nation. "Generally, the stocks of AI-adjacent corporations have tended to move together, up or down, but mostly up," Morrison said. "With this sudden refocus on funding, or rather, the sources of funding for the ongoing build-out of AI infrastructure, it seems likely that some differentiation is on the cards. "Not all companies are the same, and whatever happens with the AI trade there will be losers as well as winners."