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Tech Selloff Deepens After Amazon Unveils $200 Billion 2026 Capex and Alphabet’s Bigger AI Bill Rattles Markets

Fears over delayed AI paybacks are colliding with credible disruption risks, pressuring valuations.

Overview

  • Amazon reported Q4 revenue of $213.39 billion and projected about $200 billion in 2026 capital spending, sending shares down as much as 10% after hours despite solid AWS growth of 24% to $35.58 billion.
  • Alphabet beat quarterly expectations but guided 2026 capex to $175–$185 billion, a step-up that helped knock roughly $162 billion off its market value as shares fell around 4% on Thursday.
  • Anthropic expanded its push into high-value workflows by releasing Claude Opus 4.6 for financial research, which coincided with sharp drops in data providers such as FactSet, S&P Global, Moody’s and Nasdaq.
  • This week’s selloff was first accelerated by Anthropic’s legal-automation tools, which hammered legal-information names and broad software gauges, with reporting estimating nearly $1 trillion erased across software-linked stocks tracked by an iShares ETF over about a week.
  • Stress spread beyond equities as private-credit lenders tied to software exposure, including Blue Owl, Ares and KKR, slumped and syndicated loan prices weakened.