Wall Street suffers worst day since pandemic as midterm sweep fuels AI sell-off

Summary

A Guardian editorial argues that the midterm results show the political bill for the AI boom is falling due. The Democratic sweep intensified fears over runaway spending, mounting debt and resistance to datacentres, and tech shares tumbled. On Thursday Wall Street suffered its worst day since the pandemic, with $3.2tn wiped from markets. Nvidia's value fell by more than $400bn, and Elon Musk lost $113bn in two days. Anthropic, developer of the Claude chatbot, had been hoping to float within the next fortnight at $1.5tn (£1.1tn), but may not now get even a trillion dollars. The editorial says the sell-off may bring a needed dose of reality to an industry whose spending plans and valuations depend on heroic expectations of future profits, a view it says is shared by influential figures including Goldman Sachs' research boss and Nobel laureate Daron Acemoğlu.

Timeline

1. The Guardian

   6 Nov 2026, 23:45 UTCSource ↗

   The Guardian's editorial says the midterm sweep shows the political bill for the AI boom is falling due, with Wall Street's worst day since the pandemic wiping $3.2tn from markets and Nvidia losing more than $400bn in value.