Traders work on the floor at the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York City, U.S., June 24, 2026.
Brendan McDermid | Reuters
Stocks moved lower on Friday as OpenAI is reportedly considering delaying its IPO and as a sell-off in tech gathered pace amid mounting concerns over the rising cost of artificial intelligence infrastructure.
The S&P 500 was down 0.7%, while the Nasdaq Composite lost 1.1%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 237 points, or 0.5%.
Chip stocks were weaker after a New York Times report that OpenAI is considering delaying its IPO to next year because of SpaceX‘s poor performance following its debut and overall volatility in AI-related shares.
The report raised concerns about “sustainability of their infrastructure spending given the delay in funding from the capital markets,” wrote JPMorgan traders in a note.
The OpenAI IPO delay “could slow the pace of infrastructure spending,” said Adam Crisafulli of Vital Knowledge.
Shares of Micron Technology declined 5%, while Advanced Micro Devices and Intel shed 4% and 3%, respectively. Additionally, software stock Oracle dropped more than 1%.
The sell-off was particularly severe in Asia. SoftBank Group, which is a key backer of OpenAI, led losses across the region on Friday, plunging more than 12%. South Korean equities finished sharply lower, with the Kospi declining 5.81% to 8,411.21 and the Kosdaq shedding 4.10% to 851.37, as the broad-based technology selloff swept across the region.
Japan’s Nikkei 225 fell 4.15% to 69,360.88, while the broader Topix lost 1.32% to 3,963.36. Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 bucked the regional downturn to edge up 0.18%, closing at 8,764.20. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index closed 1.76% lower, while the mainland’s CSI 300 lost 3% to close at 4,869.64.
European stocks also fell on Friday, as a global sell-off in technology stocks sent major bourses into the red. The pan-European Stoxx 600 dropped 1%.
“This is a market that we think is quite set up to test conviction. We have this flavor of market leadership in specifically semiconductors and memory chip leaders,” said Julia Hermann, global market strategist New York Life Investment Management, on CNBC’s “Closing Bell” on Thursday afternoon. “This is a structurally more volatile flavor of tech than we saw in the Magnificent Seven for the past several years.”
Hermann added: “Then you pair that with an astonishing repricing in Fed expectations — not just the what, but the why of why the Fed might be hiking next — and you have this environment, which is candidly a recipe for volatility.”
