Amazon shares fell 7% and Intel shares dropped 25% in premarket trading on Friday, according to CNBC, after both companies reported September-quarter results that fell short of investor expectations. The declines pulled Nasdaq futures down 2% and closed out a difficult week of earnings for the technology sector.
Amazon missed estimates on both revenue and profit for the third quarter, CNBC reported. The company kept its 2026 capital expenditure forecast at $220 billion. It also posted negative free cash flow for a second straight quarter, and the shortfall was considerably larger than in the prior period.
Why it matters
The reaction reflects growing unease about the scale of AI-related spending across the largest technology companies and whether those outlays will eventually produce returns. Investors have spent much of this earnings season weighing enormous infrastructure budgets against the cash those businesses are generating, and this week's results gave them little reassurance.
The pressure was not limited to Friday's two names. On Thursday, Alphabet closed 13% lower — its steepest one-day decline on record — after it too reported a sharply widening negative free cash flow figure, according to CNBC. Microsoft shares, by contrast, moved higher after the company stayed cash flow positive in the September quarter.
Taken together, the week drew a line between companies still generating cash and those burning through it, and the market rewarded the former while punishing the latter.
A week of heavy spending meets a skeptical market
The scale of the spending is the central issue. Amazon's decision to hold its 2026 capital expenditure plan at $220 billion means the company intends to keep pouring money into infrastructure even as its free cash flow turns negative. For investors, that combination — a revenue and profit miss alongside a commitment to heavy outlays — is difficult to absorb.
Intel's 25% premarket plunge followed its own September-quarter report, which CNBC characterized as adding to the pressure on the stock. The drop is among the sharpest single-session moves for a major chipmaker in recent memory.
The broader market context has been unsettled. Other outlets covering the same week described mounting anxiety on Wall Street about the data center buildout, with The New York Times reporting that the spending blitz is consuming cash at a pace that is worrying investors. CNN described market behavior as increasingly unusual and tied the strangeness to AI. Yahoo Finance reported that investors are treating cash as king as they redraw battle lines around AI spending. Reuters, summarizing the same set of results, noted that Amazon's cash burn and Intel's weak PC demand signal were sending ripples across markets.
Those characterizations come from the respective outlets and are consistent with the picture CNBC painted: a sector whose capital demands have grown faster than its ability to reassure shareholders.
What the numbers say about the two companies
For Amazon, the third-quarter miss covered both the top and bottom lines. The company's free cash flow was negative for a second consecutive quarter and materially worse than the previous one. Its capital expenditure guidance for 2026 remained unchanged at $220 billion, a figure that underscores how much the company has committed to building out capacity.
The contrast with Microsoft is instructive. Microsoft's shares rose after it reported staying cash flow positive for the September quarter, suggesting that investors are differentiating between companies funding AI expansion from existing cash generation and those whose spending is outpacing it.
Alphabet's 13% single-day decline — described by CNBC as the worst in the company's history — came after it reported ballooning negative free cash flow. That move set the tone for the week and made Friday's reactions to Amazon and Intel less a surprise than a continuation.
Intel's situation carries its own weight. A 25% premarket decline of that magnitude typically signals that results landed far from what the market had positioned for. CNBC's reporting ties the drop to the same post-earnings pressure affecting the sector.
The week in context
Four of the largest technology companies reported within days of one another, and the market's verdict was not uniform. Microsoft was rewarded for staying cash positive. Alphabet was punished severely for the opposite. Amazon, missing on revenue and profit while holding a $220 billion spending plan and reporting a wider cash outflow, landed in the punished column. Intel's plunge was the sharpest of the group.
The common thread, as CNBC framed it, is investor nervousness about the enormous AI spending underway at the tech giants and whether it will pay off. That question now hangs over the sector heading into the next round of results.
Nasdaq futures were down 2% following the premarket moves, according to CNBC, a signal that the weakness in individual names was bleeding into the broader index.
What to watch next: whether Amazon and Intel hold near their premarket levels once regular trading begins, and whether the cash-flow divide that separated Microsoft from Alphabet, Amazon and Intel persists into the next earnings cycle.
