SNDK, NVDA, SKHY, ASML Stocks Extend Slide Overnight Amid China's AI Challenge, Tech Rotation

• SanDisk’s shares were the biggest loser on the S&P 500 index on Monday.
• Nvidia lost about $250 billion in market capitalization on Monday; Apple emerged as the most valuable company on the stock exchange.
• Stocktwits sentiment was ‘bullish’ for NVDA and AMD, ‘neutral’ for SNDK and SOXX, and ‘extremely bearish’ for DRAM.

Chip and chip-adjacent stocks fell sharply on Monday and extended their losses overnight, continuing a broader pullback and raising concerns that the sector may be entering a more prolonged downturn after climbing to record highs.

SanDisk’s shares declined 11% and were the biggest loser on the S&P 500 index. Western Digital and Seagate Technology declined over 4% each, while Advanced Micro Devices and Nvidia fell 5.2% and 5%, respectively. SK Hynix, the newly listed South Korean chip giant’s stock, fell 7.5%.

Nvidia lost about $250 billion in market capitalization on Monday, which is coincidentally about the same amount as the backstop it is in talks to provide for a massive OpenAI data-center project in Ohio. As such, Nvidia’s market cap dipped below that of Apple, which emerged as the world’s most valuable company.

SNDK declined a further 4.5% in the overnight session, leading the declines in chip stocks in post-market hours. The iShares Semiconductor ETF (SOXX) and the Roundhill Memory ETF (DRAM) fell 1.7% and 4.2% in the overnight session, respectively.

ASML Holding stock tumbled nearly 6% on Monday, after reports said a Chinese state-backed company is mass-producing chip-making machines. Shares of ASML’s peers also fell: KLA Corp was down 5.1%, Lam Research dropped 6.8%, and Applied Materials fell 5.6%.

China’s AI Rise Pressures US Trade

Several headlines converged to drag sentiment lower. Nvidia faced renewed scrutiny over the nature of its AI investment strategy, with critics arguing that its practice of investing heavily in AI companies that in turn buy Nvidia chips creates circular dependencies that add risk to the broader AI ecosystem. 

Meanwhile, China appears to be growing in strength. New AI models such as Moonshot AI’s Kimi K3 and those by DeepSeek are said to be nearly at par with frontier U.S. models but at a fraction of their costs. 

Another widely watched catalyst was ChangXin Memory Technologies' debut on the Shanghai Stock Exchange. China's biggest memory chip maker soared by nearly 470% on the first day, making it the most valuable listed company in mainland China.

Retail View On Chip Stocks

On Stocktwits, retail sentiment was ‘bullish’ for NVDA and AMD, ‘neutral’ for SNDK and SOXX, and ‘extremely bearish’ for DRAM.

“$MU $SNDK $SKHY $DRAM bulls getting cucked. Tried telling yall they would rug pull this s*** way before it actually tops in earnings,” a trader wrote.

Another said: “$SOXL $SOXX $SOXS this is the definition of a bear flag.”

Investors will gain better visibility with Seagate’s quarterly report after the market closes on Tuesday and SK Hynix’s earnings report on Thursday at 9 am Seoul time.

For updates and corrections, email newsroom[at]stocktwits[dot]com.