SanDisk (SNDK) and Micron (MU) dropped 9% and 7% after WSJ revealed top tech firms carry $3 trillion in off-balance-sheet AI commitments. The selloff is pure profit-taking, given that SanDisk entered Tuesday up 653% year-to-date and Micron up 255%, with no memory-specific bad news driving it. With the 30-year Treasury at a 19-year high, prediction markets give a 97% chance Micron closes Tuesday lower.
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SanDisk (NASDAQ:SNDK) is down 9.1%, Micron Technology (NASDAQ:MU) is down 7.3%, and Western Digital (NASDAQ:WDC) is down 5.3% as of late morning trading. The trigger is a Wall Street Journal analysis of tech-company footnotes showing that nine top tech companies had some $3 trillion of off-balance-sheet commitments mostly related to AI, obligations that are growing faster than traditional "capex," which totaled about $600 billion over the past year they reported. The WSJ noted those commitments are about triple what the companies owe under their outstanding leases and long-term borrowings.
The report landed at a fragile moment. Anthropic told investors over the weekend that its annualized revenue run rate hit $65 billion at the end of July, while OpenAI has said its ARR recently hit $40 billion. Both are growing fast, but both came in below numbers that had been circulating privately. separately reported Anthropic is guiding to 2028 revenue of $190 billion to $200 billion, again short of the most bullish whisper figures.
When frontier-lab revenue looks softer than expected and tech's forward AI obligations look larger than expected, the AI hardware trade gets hit first. Long rates are compounding the pressure. The 10-year Treasury yield sits near 4.7%, in the 96th percentile of its trailing 12-month range, and the 30-Year Treasury hit a 19-year high today.
Higher discount rates disproportionately hit capital-intensive, high-multiple semiconductor names. The broader market backdrop remains calm. The VIX sits near 15, still in the low-volatility range, which frames today's action as a sector rotation rather than a macro flush.
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