This week in U.S. stocks has been surreal: earnings didn’t crash, but stock prices did. Intel earned $0.52 per share in Q3, beating expectations of $0.40 by 30%. Yet on Friday, its stock plunged 29%—the largest single-day drop since Bloomberg began tracking data in 1982. The problem? Guidance for Q4 fell below expectations, and the company won’t generate positive cash flow this year. AI has driven up memory prices, but PC sales are stagnating; Intel hasn’t yet capitalized on AI—and has already been hit hard. The day before, Google tumbled. Its cloud revenue doubled, and total revenue missed estimates by only a fraction of a percent—yet its stock still dropped 12.64%, its worst single-day performance since its 2004 IPO, wiping out nearly $500 billion in market value in one day. The market is focused on two things: slowing growth in search advertising and a “significant” increase in capital spending through 2027. Others aren’t faring better. Amazon spent $77.3 billion on capital expenditures in one quarter, while generating negative free cash flow of $33.5 billion. Twelve hours after Microsoft’s earnings, it issued $25 billion in debt—the first time since 2017. Meta moved even earlier, launching a potential equity raise of up to $97.5 billion. Together, the four giants are spending close to $750 billion on capital expenditures this year. On Friday, the Nasdaq fell 2.9%. Previously, everyone asked: How big is AI demand? Now the question is: Who’s going to pay for it?