Key Highlights

● Nvidia closed at $212.21 on October 22, among the Dow's weakest performers.

● The stock lost about $235 billion in market value on the day.

● Huang said demand for neoclouds is off the charts but capital is scarce.

● Nvidia has lost more than $600 billion in value since its early-October peak.

Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA) slid on Thursday, October 22, 2026, closing at $212.21 and ranking among the weakest performers on the Dow Jones Industrial Average.

The chipmaker was also one of the biggest drags on the S&P 500, according to market reports, and lost about $235 billion in market value. Comments from chief executive Jensen Huang about the financing of AI infrastructure added fuel to an already heavy selloff.

What Huang said

Speaking on the sidelines of Nvidia's GTC event in Berlin, where the company unveiled its DSX POD system, Huang was upbeat about demand but candid about money.

"If you look at the fundamentals, the demand for the neoclouds is off the charts," he said, referring to specialist AI cloud providers. But he said scarce working capital was holding those customers back. "The demand of the capital is much greater than the availability of the capital," Huang said.

He added: "One of the things that we're trying to do is to establish Nvidia's compute as a financeable asset." On China, he said: "No market is closed forever."

Traders at Wells Fargo said Huang's comments spooked markets. For investors already worried about who will pay for the AI build-out, a reminder that capital is the bottleneck landed badly.

Meta and Lam set the stage

The comments came on top of two other blows. Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:META), one of Nvidia's biggest customers, reported late Wednesday that it had narrowed its 2026 capital-spending range to $135 billion to $145 billion and swung to negative free cash flow of $2.12 billion, its first cash outflow in more than a decade, according to market data. Lam Research (NASDAQ:LRCX)'s December-quarter outlook cited supply constraints.

Together, those reports raised questions about the cost and financing of AI spending rather than its existence. CoreWeave (NASDAQ:CRWV), a neocloud operator, tumbled to a 17-month low on debt and cost-of-capital worries.

A brutal day for chips

The Philadelphia Semiconductor Index suffered its biggest one-day drop since June 23. AMD (NASDAQ:AMD), Marvell (NASDAQ:MRVL), Broadcom (NASDAQ:AVGO) and Intel (NASDAQ:INTC) all fell hard. The Nasdaq Composite lost 694.00 points, its steepest decline since June 5, and the S&P 500 dropped 93.74 points to 7,663.43, its worst day since July.

Nvidia has now lost more than $600 billion in market value since its early-October peak, according to market data.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average held up better, finishing up 11.89 points at 52,867.98, essentially flat and at a one-month high, according to market data, as defensive names such as Procter & Gamble (NYSE:PG) and Johnson & Johnson (NYSE:JNJ) offset losses in Nvidia, Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) and Caterpillar (NYSE:CAT).

Nvidia's Customers Report Next Week

Next week's earnings from Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) and Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL) on October 28 and Amazon on October 29 will be key for Nvidia, since their data-center spending plans drive much of its revenue. The Federal Reserve's decision on October 28 will matter too, given that the debate is now about the cost of capital. Investors will also watch for any follow-up from Nvidia on its effort to make its compute easier to finance, and for signs of whether neocloud customers can secure the funding they need.