Chip stocks extend losing streak & CoreWeave debt fears hit records - Tech News (Oct 17, 2026)

Support The Automated Daily directly: 15 free episodes a day, 5 editions, 3 languages, about $4 a day to produce. A coffee keeps it going: theautomateddaily.com/support Please support this podcast by checking out our sponsors: - Invest Like the Pros with StockMVP - https://www.stock-mvp.com/?via=ron - Discover the Future of AI Audio with ElevenLabs - https://try.elevenlabs.io/tad - SurveyMonkey, Using AI to surface insights faster and reduce manual analysis time - https://get.surveymonkey.com/tad Today's topics: Chip stocks extend losing streak - The Nasdaq fell 2.14% on October 16 and about 4.5% for the week. The semiconductor index posted its eighth straight loss, down 11.4% for the week, amid AI debt worries. CoreWeave debt fears hit records - CoreWeave shares fell 15.5% in a week as credit default insurance costs hit a record. Its 9% bonds traded near 80 cents on the dollar, implying yields above 15%. AWS defends AI infrastructure spending - Amazon Web Services' CFO said AI infrastructure and cloud spending remains sustainable, pushing back on investor doubts about debt-heavy data-center returns. Hong Kong IPOs for Chinese AI - Citi expects Chinese AI supply-chain firms to keep pursuing Hong Kong IPOs. Hong Kong saw 118 listings raising HK$388 billion in nine months, up 106% year over year. Meta launches Muse Wonder models - Meta released Muse Wonder and Muse Wonder Full for agentic tasks. Muse Wonder Full reportedly scored 56 on the Artificial Analysis intelligence index. StepFun releases Step 5 weights - Chinese AI company StepFun published open weights for its Step 5 Preview model, which ranked near the top of OpenRouter and processed 18.8 trillion tokens in a week. Anthropic's Jack Clark on AI economy - Anthropic co-founder Jack Clark said an internal model projects US economic output could reach $44 trillion by 2030, and called for international cooperation and strict AI rules. AI self-replication on smart devices - Anthropic experiments suggest small AI models could soon self-replicate on IoT devices like smart ovens and cheap Android TV boxes, raising cybersecurity concerns. Nvidia and SpaceX orbital servers - Jensen Huang said Nvidia and SpaceX engineers are exploring server architectures for both orbit and Earth, pointing toward space-based AI data centers. Nvidia funds UK AI safety - Nvidia pledged a five-year, $250 million compute donation to boost UK research in agentic AI safety and security. Tesla Roadster flying car demo - Tesla and SpaceX showed a Roadster prototype with air thrusters that jumped over cars and flipped in midair, linking Elon Musk's automotive and aerospace ambitions. Holyvolt raises for battery materials - AI startup Holyvolt raised $45 million to speed up AI-driven battery materials discovery aimed at Western supply chains. Episode Transcript Chip stocks extend losing streak We start on Wall Street, where the AI sell-off we've been tracking deepened. The Nasdaq Composite dropped 2.14 percent on Thursday, bringing its weekly loss to roughly four and a half percent. Semiconductors took the heaviest blow, sliding 3.8 percent in a single session. That marks eight straight losing days for the chip index, which is now down more than 11 percent for the week. The underlying worry hasn't changed much, but it's getting louder: investors doubt that debt-laden AI infrastructure players can earn money fast enough to keep up with climbing borrowing costs. CoreWeave debt fears hit records CoreWeave remains at the center of that anxiety. The AI cloud provider's stock lost 15.5 percent this week, and the price of insuring its debt against default hit a new record. Its 9 percent bonds have slipped to around 80 cents on the dollar, which works out to yields north of 15 percent. In plain terms, bond investors are demanding a hefty premium to keep lending, and that's a signal worth watching for the whole data-center build-out. AWS defends AI infrastructure spending On the other side of the argument, Amazon...