Shares in US technologies fell on Thursday, led by a 12 per cent decline in Microsoft, dragging down the broader market on AI spending concerns.
The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite shed 0.72 per cent when trading closed, while the S&P 500 dipped 0.1 per cent. The Dow Jones Industrial Average ended the day slightly higher, gaining 55.96 points, or up 0.11 per cent.
Bitcoin was trading 5.66 per cent lower at $84,131.98.
Microsoft pared back some losses on the day but its shares still suffered steep losses, falling 9.99 per cent to 4433.50 a share amid concerns over AI spending and that cloud growth could be slowing.
The drop in shares came despite the company beating estimates and reporting that cloud revenue topped $50 billion after the closing bell on Wednesday.
"We are only at the beginning phases of AI diffusion and already Microsoft has built an AI business that is larger than some of our biggest franchises," chief executive Satya Nadella said in a statement.
Revenue in Intelligent Cloud, which includes the company's Azure business, was $32.9 billion for the quarter, beating estimates of $32.2 billion. Azure and other cloud services' revenue increased 39 per cent, Microsoft said.
Microsoft's close ties to OpenAI has made it one of the companies to have benefitted most from the artificial intelligence boom, and its market capitalisation crossed $4 trillion in July. Since then, broader concerns about AI spending have seen it come down.
In contrast, Meta closed more than 10 per cent higher at $738.31 a share after raising its 2026 capital expenditures guidance from $72.2 billion to between $115 billion and $135 billion. The Facebook parent company's earnings had also beaten analysts' top and bottom line estimates.
Meta and Microsoft are two of the big-four hyperscalers that are pouring billions into data centres. Apple was scheduled to report its earnings after trading on Thursday, while Amazon's are due to come out next week.
