By Shashwat Chauhan
Nov 13 (Reuters) - Shares of AI-related US companies dropped again on Friday, with neoclouds among the worst hit, fueled by fresh jitters over AI financing following Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang's abrupt exit.
The tech-heavy Nasdaq-100 declined 2.2%, on pace to erase almost $870 billion in market value if the losses hold through the close. The Philadelphia SE Semiconductor index also shed 6%, facing a more than $670 billion wipeout for the day.
CoreWeave and Nebius Group, neocloud firms
backed by Nvidia, slumped 10.8% and 12.1%, respectively, extending their sharp declines from Thursday when longtime CEO Huang stepped down after revelations of extramarital affairs.
Nvidia, under Huang, has financed infrastructure built around its chips, a strategy that has driven demand but also raised questions about circular funding flows between the chipmaker and its customers.
"It's a short-term death blow to the industry because the amount of vendor financing and financing guarantees that Nvidia and Jensen Huang stepped into are now over," said Thomas Hayes, chairman of Great Hill Capital LLC.
Further, Nscale, a British cloud provider also backed by Nvidia, amended its IPO filing to say it expects to report a net loss of $1.7 billion in the nine months ended September 30, wider than the $433.3 million net loss a year ago.
Chip stocks, widely regarded as among the biggest winners of the AI boom, also dropped. Advanced Micro Devices fell 10.2% and Broadcom lost 6.7% after both gained for the last five sessions.
Memory chipmaker Micron Technology shed 5.6% while data storage companies Western Digital and Sandisk dipped 7.7% and 9.3%, respectively.
Photonic product makers Lumentum and Coherent, along with AI server makers Dell and HPE, fell between 6.2% and 10.7% each.
Utilities and equipment suppliers exposed to the AI boom, including GE Vernova, Constellation Energy and Vistra, eased about 2% to 3.3% each.
AI hyperscalers were also mostly lower, barring Meta Platforms, which rose 1.3%. Oracle, Alphabet, Amazon.com and Microsoft fell between 0.1% and 3.6%.
Nvidia's quarterly earnings and AI lab Anthropic's much-awaited public markets debut are set for next week and could prove to be catalysts for sentiment towards AI.
"You have no idea what to expect from Nvidia. That's the problem. This company is pure uncertainty right now," said Steve Sosnick, chief market analyst at Interactive Brokers.
(Reporting by Shashwat Chauhan in Bengaluru; Additional reporting by Darshan Kumar and Anjana J. Nair; Editing by Joyjeet Das)
