Intel stock plunges 28.58%, worst day since the 1970s

Tan's revival plan leans heavily on Intel's foundry arm, which has struggled to secure outside business. Intel remains the only US-based maker of advanced logic chips and is now in high-volume production of its most advanced 18A chip at a new fab in Arizona, positioning itself as an alternative to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. A second Arizona fab is expected to start operations by the end of 2028.

Intel still has no external customers for those new chips. On the earnings call, Tan said the company will have 'a couple of customers ready to announce' over the next two quarters and claimed 'tremendous progress' on its coming 14A node. Investors were not convinced: D.A. Davidson cut the stock to neutral from buy, writing that 'it is hard to justify the current multiple when weakness is so significant.'

Intel was not alone. Reddit sank 29.27% on Friday, its worst day since going public in 2024, after forecasting fourth-quarter sales of $1 billion to $1.03 billion, below the $1.05 billion analysts expected. CEO Steve Huffman said Google search referral traffic fell 'meaningfully' in the quarter as AI Overviews reshaped search, and the company will test requiring users to log in to see content.

Amazon slipped 1.4% after a third-quarter miss on revenue and profit, and Alphabet posted its worst day on record on Thursday, plunging more than 12%. Beneath the individual results, the common thread is anxiety about the enormous AI spending by tech giants and whether it will pay off. 'I don't think this is a moment of reckoning,' Raymond James chief market strategist Matt Orton told CNBC, 'but I think it's a moment where investors should take a long thought about how positioning across the space still remains crowded.'

For anyone in Tunisia shopping for a laptop or desktop, the practical signal is pricing pressure: Intel expects the PC slump to last through the first half of next year as memory and component costs stay high, so deep discounts on new machines may be harder to find than usual. No Intel product availability or pricing change for the Tunisian market has been announced.

For readers watching the wider tech economy, the message is that AI enthusiasm and hardware fundamentals are pulling in opposite directions. Intel's 18A and 14A manufacturing plans and its ability to sign outside foundry customers over the next two quarters will matter far beyond its own share price, since they are central to whether advanced chip production spreads beyond Taiwan.