Pull to refresh
Logo
Daily Brief
Following Why Ranks Sign Up
Global chip selloff wipes out over $1 trillion as custom AI silicon challenges Nvidia

Global chip selloff wipes out over $1 trillion as custom AI silicon challenges Nvidia

Money Moves

Big AI buyers are designing their own chips, and the market is repricing a year of optimism about Nvidia's near-monopoly.

Today: Global chip selloff erases over $1 trillion

Overview

Chip stocks lost more than $1 trillion in market value on July 28, 2026. Memory maker SK Hynix fell about 14% and Samsung dropped over 10%, pulling South Korea's Kospi down roughly 9%. Nvidia slid more than 5% and briefly handed the title of world's most valuable company back to Apple.

The trigger is a change in who designs AI chips. OpenAI, Amazon, and Cerebras are now shipping their own custom silicon instead of buying every chip from Nvidia. Investors read that as the start of a lasting shift, and repriced about a year of AI-hardware optimism in a single session.

Why it matters

If custom chips keep displacing Nvidia, cloud giants' AI bills fall, and so do the chip stocks sitting in most retirement funds.

Questions about this story

No questions yet — be the first to ask.

Play on this story Voices Debate Who Said What? Predict Higher or Lower

Key Indicators

$1T+
Market value erased
Combined loss across global chip stocks on July 28, 2026.
-14%
SK Hynix single-day drop
The Nvidia memory supplier led Asia's losses.
-9%
Kospi index drop
South Korea's benchmark fell as Samsung and SK Hynix sank.
-5%
Nvidia single-day drop
Enough to briefly cede most-valuable-company status to Apple.
10 GW
OpenAI–Broadcom chip plan
Custom accelerators OpenAI plans to deploy through 2029, bypassing Nvidia.

Voices

Curated perspectives — historical figures and your fellow readers.

Ever wondered what historical figures would say about today's headlines?

Sign up to generate historical perspectives on this story.

Log in Sign Up

Play

Exploring all sides of a story is often best achieved with Play.

Log in to play. Track your picks, climb the leaderboards. Log in Sign Up
Predict 4 ways this could play out. Contrarian picks score more — points lock when the scenario resolves. Log in to play
Higher or Lower Two numbers from this story. Guess which is bigger. 5 rounds to set a streak. Log in to play
Timeline Five events from this story — drag them oldest to newest. Log in to play
Connections Sixteen names from the news. Find the four hidden groups of four. Log in to play

People Involved

Jensen Huang
Jensen Huang
Defending Nvidia's lead as big customers build rival chips
 Sam Altman
Sam Altman
Diversifying OpenAI's chip supply away from Nvidia alone
 Andrew Feldman
Andrew Feldman
Positioning wafer-scale chips as a GPU alternative for inference

Organizations Involved

Nvidia Corporation
Nvidia Corporation
Semiconductor company
Dominant AI chip supplier now facing in-house rivals

Nvidia's graphics processors are the default hardware for building and running AI models.
Amazon Web Services (AWS)
Amazon Web Services (AWS)
Cloud computing division
Shipping custom Trainium chips in volume

Amazon's cloud arm designs its own Trainium AI chips to cut its reliance on Nvidia.
SK Hynix
SK Hynix
Memory chip maker
Hardest-hit stock in the July 28 selloff

SK Hynix makes the high-bandwidth memory that sits alongside AI processors.

Timeline

January 2026 July 2026

6 events Latest: Today
Tap a bar to jump to that date

  1. Global chip selloff erases over $1 trillion

    Today Market

    SK Hynix drops about 14% and Samsung over 10%; Nvidia falls 5% and briefly loses the top-company title to Apple.

  2. Cerebras says its new chip will fight GPUs

    Statement

    Cerebras announces a chip built to compete directly with GPU architectures, sharpening the challenge to Nvidia.

  3. First tremor hits Asian chip stocks

    Market

    Samsung and SK Hynix fall over 9% as a Wall Street chip selloff spreads to Asia, an early sign of nerves.

  4. OpenAI unveils Jalapeño chip with Broadcom

    Product

    OpenAI reveals its first custom inference chip, designed with Broadcom, with initial deployment targeted for late 2026.

  5. Amazon Trainium3 ships in volume

    Product

    AWS begins volume shipments of its custom Trainium3 chip, offered as a lower-cost alternative to Nvidia hardware.

  6. OpenAI adds Cerebras to its chip roster

    Deal

    OpenAI signs a chip agreement with Cerebras, widening its supply beyond Nvidia, AMD, and Broadcom.

Historical Context

3 moments from history that rhyme with this story — and how they unfolded.

March 2000

Cisco loses its dot-com crown (2000)

In March 2000, Cisco passed Microsoft to become the world's most valuable company at about $500 billion. It made the routers and switches that built the early internet, the picks-and-shovels of that boom. Then demand assumptions broke.

Then

Cisco shares fell roughly 88% over the next two years, from about $79 to $9.50.

Now

The stock did not pass its 2000 peak again until late 2025, even as the company stayed profitable and large.

Why this matters now

Like Nvidia, Cisco was the dominant supplier priced for endless growth. The parallel shows how fast a hardware leader reprices when buyers' spending plans shift.

June 2020

Apple drops Intel for its own chips (2020)

Apple announced it would stop buying Intel processors for Macs and use chips it designed itself, built by TSMC. A major customer chose to build rather than buy. The first Apple-designed Macs shipped later that year.

Then

Apple's chips beat Intel's on speed and battery life, and Apple stopped being an Intel customer for Macs.

Now

Intel lost the Mac business permanently and spent years trying to regain lost ground in chip performance.

Why this matters now

This is the exact mechanism now hitting Nvidia: a big buyer designs its own silicon and stops writing checks to the incumbent. It shows the threat can be real and lasting.

January 2025

The DeepSeek selloff (January 2025)

A cheaper AI model from Chinese startup DeepSeek raised fears that companies could build strong AI with far less chip spending. Nvidia fell about 17% in one session, near $600 billion, the largest single-day loss for any company at the time.

Then

Nvidia's stock recovered much of the drop within weeks as buyers kept ordering chips.

Now

The episode showed how sensitive Nvidia's value is to any hint that AI hardware demand could soften.

Why this matters now

The July 2026 selloff rhymes with this: a demand-side worry, not a bad Nvidia result, wiping out huge value fast. It also shows such drops can reverse quickly.

Sources

(7)
+2
Bloomberg CNBC Crypto Briefing TechCrunch ABC News CNBC Crypto Briefing