Nvidia Pushes Back on OpenAI Rift as AI-Fueled Selling Drags Software and Asset Managers

Markets opened under pressure as a blend of corporate news, strategic partnership uncertainty and broader policy headlines triggered a rapid, theme‑driven re‑rating. At the center was Nvidia, where CEO Jensen Huang disputed media reports that suggested a breakdown with OpenAI; speaking to reporters in Taipei he stressed that early, headline‑grabbing memoranda were nonbinding and that Nvidia still intends to participate in the ongoing financing discussions, without committing to a headline dollar figure. Earlier reporting had flagged a $100 billion‑style framework as illustrative rather than contractual, and Nvidia’s clarification sought to draw a line between a public framework and enforceable transaction terms. The episode highlighted the wider pattern in the AI ecosystem: firms are negotiating capital, compute and distribution together, and will likely convert high‑level frameworks into detailed contracts over time — a process that preserves uncertainty on size, timing and exclusivity. Parallel reporting that Nvidia held a roughly $2.0 billion stake in CoreWeave illustrated a complementary approach to anchoring downstream GPU capacity while managing execution risk. On the earnings front, AMD topped estimates but its cautious forward guidance sparked a sharp after‑hours selloff, while a cloud‑software provider’s weak outlook amplified losses across the software cohort and erased a meaningful chunk of market value. Software heavyweights including ServiceNow and Salesforce fell steeply as investors priced in faster product obsolescence, margin pressure and higher capex needs tied to AI rollouts. Credit markets added a second-order shock: bond desks and private‑credit investors began penalizing issuers and asset managers perceived to have concentrated exposure to software loans, widening spreads and elevating the effective cost of capital for smaller, margin‑squeezed vendors. The defensive tone produced a sector bifurcation — commodity and large‑cap cyclicals outperformed while tech and private‑credit‑linked names lagged — and a State Department‑hosted critical‑minerals dialogue coincided with gains in miners that further accentuated the rotation. Other headline risks, including uncertainty around U.S. Federal Reserve leadership and discrete legal and policy inquiries, contributed to headline sensitivity and intraday volatility. Crypto markets also reflected the risk‑off tilt, with spot‑ETF flows and concentrated liquidations adding to weakness. Separately, a proposed combination in the aerospace/AI startup space that puts the merged valuation into the trillion‑dollar neighborhood supplied a countervailing narrative about scale and consolidation in the AI value chain. Taken together, the session showed how executive messaging, company guidance and structural funding discussions can interact to produce outsized moves across equities, credit and crypto; investors will be watching concrete contract terms, compute delivery schedules and company-level forecasts for clearer direction.