markets

Matt Phillips12/12/25

Data center trade deep in the red

The data center trade is seeing its steepest sell-off since the market rout that was ignited by President Donald Trump’s Rose Garden tariff announcement back in April.

Goldman Sachs’ themed basket of AI data center shares was down more than 6% at around 12 p.m. ET, putting it on track for its worst day since the tariff announcement.

Losses hammered seemingly every form of input needed for the sprawling concrete server warehouses at the heart of the investment boom.

Hardware makers including data storage companies like Sandisk, Western Digital, and Seagate Technology Holdings, as well as DRAM maker Micron — some of the best-performing stocks in the S&P 500 this year — were taking a licking, as were networking stocks Cisco and Arista Networks and data center builders such as Vertiv Holdings and electrical and mechanical contractor Emcor.

Optimism for all things AI has seemed to evaporate throughout the week, as the stock market greeted lackluster quarterly numbers from Oracle and Broadcom with jittery sell-offs and concern about growing debts that could crater cash flows.

Those worries seem to be spreading to ancillary beneficiaries of the AI boom on Friday, gouging a chunk out of charts that retail dip buyers have not — at least so far — stepped in to buy as we head into the weekend.

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Helena Cheng19m

Innodata soars after company boosts full-year sales guidance, delivers impressive Q1 results

Innodata is surging in premarket trading after announcing better than expected quarterly results and raising its full-year sales guidance.

The data engineering company is seemingly benefitting from demand for its expertise to help improve the capabilities of AI tools.

The key numbers for Q1:

Revenue: $90.1 million (estimate: $76.5 million)
Adjusted EBITDA: $25.0 million (estimate: $10.4 million)

Innodata raised its full-year revenue growth guidance to around 40% or more, up from the around 35% or more guidance it gave out ten weeks ago.

CEO Jack Abuhoff described this outlook as “prudent,” noting that several potentially large programs have not yet been included in this forecast.

To that end, he noted a new set of engagements with a large technology company that, if solidified, would generate approximately $51 million of revenue in 2026. Management is currently in discussions with an additional 15 companies and two hyperscalers about its new platform for agentic systems, Abuhoff added.

Earlier this year, this company announced a pact to provide data and data engineering services to Palantir to help improve AI tools that analyzed rodeos.

The robust quarter and outlook are bringing shares of Innodata back into the green on the year after having been down 10% heading into this report.

A South Korean national flag (L) with a Samsung Group flag (

South Korea surges past Canada to become the seventh-largest stock market in the world amidst AI boom

The country’s two chip giants have seen their shares more than double this year.

Cloudflare and HubSpot both beat on Q1 earnings — but with AI threats looming, it wasn't enough to satisfy investors

Traders continue to "sell software now, ask questions later."

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Akamai Technologies jumps on $1.8 billion cloud infrastructure deal

Akamai is up 26% in premarket trading Friday after the company announced a major cloud infrastructure deal tied to AI, helping investors look past modestly better-than-expected Q1 results and a weaker-than-expected Q2 outlook.

In a press release Thursday after the bell, the cloud and cybersecurity company said it had secured a $1.8 billion, seven-year commitment from a “leading frontier model provider” for Akamai’s cloud infrastructure services, a deal CEO Tom Leighton said strengthened the company’s position as a “key infrastructure provider in the AI economy.”

The announcement came alongside Akamai’s Q1 earnings, which were only modestly ahead of Wall Street expectations. Adjusted earnings came in at $1.61 per share, slightly above analysts’ estimate of $1.60 per share compiled by FactSet. Revenue rose 6% year on year to $1.074 billion, broadly in-line with Wall Street's forecasts.

The company said growth was led by its cloud infrastructure services, where revenue jumped 40% year on year. Security revenue grew 11%, while delivery and other cloud applications revenue dropped 7%.

For the current quarter, the company forecast adjusted earnings per share of $1.45 to $1.65, with the midpoint falling short of the $1.68 expected, and revenue of $1.075 billion to $1.1 billion also below the $1.104 billion estimate at the midpoint, according to FactSet.

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Nvidia to invest up to $2.1 billion in IREN in partnership that deploys as much as 5 gigawatts of its AI infrastructure

Another day, another massive Nvidia warrants deal in the AI ecosystem.

Shares of data center company IREN spiked 20% in postmarket trading after it reached a pact with the chip designer to deploy up to 5 gigawatts of its AI offerings across data centers.

This means that IREN will effectively be building out data centers designed by Nvidia to optimize for its hardware. And some of that hardware deployed will seemingly then be utilized by Nvidia: IREN also announced a $3.4 billion AI cloud contract with the giant on Thursday.

As part of the arrangement, IREN issued Nvidia warrants that expire in five years that enable the company to buy up to 30 million shares at $70 apiece. If fully exercised, that would amount to a $2.1 billion investment into IREN.

This announcement took the sting out of IREN’s Q3 results, which saw the firm report sales of $144.8 million (compared to analyst estimates of $216.6 million) and adjusted EBITDA of $59.5 million (estimate: $125 million).

On Wednesday, Nvidia announced an investment of $500 million in fiber-optics firm Corning to accelerate its manufacturing capacity.

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