Wall Street is dumping software’s AI winners and mostly leaving the losers alone. Palantir (PLTR) and CrowdStrike (CRWD) are both down more than 10% at their lows Thursday, while Salesforce (CRM) and Adobe (ADBE) are barely moving.
The sell-off that slaughtered chip stocks has spread to the software names most tied to the AI build-out. Palantir has shed about $40 billion in market value and is on pace for its worst day since February. The stock is now roughly a quarter below its Oct. 9 record and testing its 200-day moving average.
It has plenty of company. Cloudflare (NET), Rubrik (RBRK), Okta (OKTA), Palo Alto Networks (PANW), and Oracle (ORCL) are all posting steep losses, and Cloudflare is on pace for its worst day since May.
154.51 -17.19 (-10.01%)
As of 1:05:49 pm GMT-5. Market open.
PLTR CRWD NET
The stocks getting hit hardest are the ones that had run the farthest. Before Thursday, CrowdStrike had roughly doubled this year, Okta had more than doubled, and Palo Alto was up nearly 90%.
The names holding up have been this year’s punching bags. Intuit (INTU) is down nearly half in 2026, and Adobe and ServiceNow (NOW) are each off about 30%, beaten down by fears that AI will eat into their businesses. After a year of heavy selling, they have far less to give back.
The trigger is the same one hitting chipmakers. Democrats won control of both chambers of Congress after a campaign in which candidates in both parties took aim at AI data centers. Software tied to the AI build-out trades right alongside the hardware. Nvidia (NVDA) has lost nearly $1.4 trillion since its October record.
Software as a group is holding up better than chips. The iShares Expanded Tech-Software ETF (IGV) is falling about half as much as the VanEck Semiconductor ETF (SMH). That’s partly because software was already down. The fund is still about 15% below its September 2025 record after a steep slide earlier this year.
One AI software stock is bucking the sell-off. AppLovin (APP) is up nearly 30% after strong quarterly results and an upbeat outlook, adding back much of what Palantir is losing. Even so, the stock is still down roughly half for the year.
For the rest of AI software, Washington is the new worry. The stocks that had the best year are now the ones with the most to lose.
Internal AI tools helped analyze interview transcripts, research, and draft this post. Humans reviewed, edited, and fact-checked this post before publication.
Follow Jared Blikre on X @SPYJared or email him at jaredblikre@yahooinc.com.
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