AI stocks slide as Texas governor result raises data center risks

Texas Governor-elect Gina Hinojosa is calling for an immediate moratorium on data center development as she prepares to take office in January, citing concerns about water use, power infrastructure and the impact on rural communities, KHOU reported. She wants construction halted until the Texas Legislature establishes protections for communities under state law, though the details of any potential legislation remain unclear. KHOU’s political analyst said data centers have become a bipartisan concern and expects lawmakers from both parties to work with one another and with Hinojosa to develop regulations they can agree on.

The political rhetoric fueled a widespread sell-off across the chipmaking industry, where companies depend heavily on the rapid buildout of computing infrastructure, The Globe and Mail reported, citing CNBC. Calls to halt or slow AI data center construction directly threaten demand projections for high-performance semiconductor components and processing units. The Globe and Mail named Lattice Semiconductor, Applied Materials, AMD, Intel and KLA Corporation among the shares falling.

CNBC reported that AMD’s shares are extremely volatile and have had 55 moves greater than 5 percent over the last year, but moves this big are rare even for AMD and indicate this news significantly impacted the market’s perception of the business. AMD is up 85.8 percent since the beginning of the year but at $416.86 per share is still trading 35.8 percent below its 52-week high of $649.42 from October 2026. Investors who bought $1,000 worth of AMD’s shares five years ago would now be looking at an investment worth $3,045.

Separately, Reuters reported that Micron has paused work on a planned $4.5 billion memory-chip plant in Taiwan amid an extended labor dispute, according to a Bloomberg report cited by Reuters. The report attributed the pause to labor negotiations, not the debate over U.S. data center construction.

The Globe and Mail also noted that two days earlier investors returned to major chipmakers following steep previous-session declines and an aggregate $3.7 trillion sell-off sparked by concerns over artificial intelligence spending and neocloud debt, lifting key players including Nvidia, AMD and Intel alongside the broader Philadelphia Semiconductor Index.