Key Highlights

● Astera Labs tumbled on Friday, October 30, 2026, trading sharply lower.

● No company-specific news explained the decline.

● It makes Data Center connectivity chips.

● Nvidia lost about $185 billion in market value.

Astera Labs (NASDAQ:ALAB) was slammed on Friday, October 30, 2026, trading sharply lower in the afternoon, according to market data. No company-specific news was found to explain the decline. The stock moved with the AI-hardware sector as investors dumped chip and data center names.

The selloff came on a day when the Nasdaq Composite fell 747.73 points to 25,437.00, its worst day since June 5. Astera Labs designs connectivity chips and related products that help processors, memory and networking gear communicate inside AI servers and data centers, placing it squarely in the part of the market that took the heaviest losses.

Intel lit the fuse

The trigger for the broad chip rout was Intel (NASDAQ:INTC). After Thursday's close, Intel issued a fourth-quarter outlook well short of expectations, guiding Revenue to $15 billion to $16 billion against consensus of about $17.1 billion to $17.3 billion, and warned of cash burn this year. Intel closed at $65.76 in what market reports described as the steepest one-day drop on record for the stock.

The Philadelphia Semiconductor index closed at 10,688.80 after a steep slide. Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA) lost about $185 billion in market value, according to market data, and Advanced Micro Devices (NASDAQ:AMD) closed at $504.80. Broadcom (NASDAQ:AVGO), Marvell (NASDAQ:MRVL), Arm (NASDAQ:ARM), Micron (NASDAQ:MU) and ASML (NASDAQ:ASML) all fell. Optical and networking names including Lumentum (NASDAQ:LITE) and Coherent (NYSE:COHR) also declined.

A Bank of America (NYSE:BAC) analyst said the "agentic tide" in data center is "more than offset by PC/supply headwinds" at Intel, as he downgraded that stock to Neutral.

Worries about AI spending

The rout fed a broader reassessment of the AI trade. Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN)'s third-quarter report showed trailing 12-month free Cash Flow of negative $42.4 billion as spending on AI infrastructure ballooned, and the company said 2027 Capital spending would be "meaningfully more" than this year's roughly $220 billion. Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL) was still under pressure after its worst day ever on Thursday, when it reported negative free cash flow of $9.1 billion.

"Together, Amazon, Google, Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) and Meta (NASDAQ:META) spent more than $200bn in the third quarter alone," said a market analyst, who warned that "the risk is that higher financing costs will absorb more of the cash generated".

"The message from investors is becoming clearer: strong AI Demand is no longer enough on its own," said a senior market analyst.

AI-infrastructure peers also sold off. CoreWeave (NASDAQ:CRWV) and Nebius Group (NASDAQ:NBIS) closed sharply lower with no company-specific news, Tower Semiconductor plunged with the chip sector, and Dell (NYSE:DELL) and HP slid on Intel's warning about a prolonged PC slump.

The broader market

The S&P 500 fell 140.32 points to 7,580.07, the Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 572.25 points to 51,770.31, and the Russell 2000 slid 47.37 points to 2,811.84. Technology was the worst of the 11 S&P 500 sectors by a wide margin, while energy, consumer staples, health care and utilities rose. The equal-weight S&P 500 fell much less than the cap-weighted index, showing how concentrated the damage was in chips and megacaps.

Other pressures included oil above $100, a reported $6.3 billion hack at crypto exchange Binance, and a hawkish Federal Reserve, with futures pricing a likely December rate hike.

What to watch

Investors will look for signs of whether AI-hardware stocks stabilize after Friday's losses. Palantir (NASDAQ:PLTR) reports on Monday, November 2, Super Micro Computer (NASDAQ:SMCI) on November 3 and Qualcomm (NASDAQ:QCOM) on November 4, each offering further reads on demand for AI computing and chips.

The midterm elections on Tuesday, November 3, are also in focus, with investors watching state and local races for data-center implications. The October jobs report, due Friday, November 6, will shape expectations for the Fed's December meeting.