Nasdaq futures are getting crushed

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Nasdaq futures are getting hammered overnight.

They fell around 2% to 2.7%, and the weakness is spreading across global tech markets.

The big question investors are asking now:

Has the AI trade gotten too expensive?

Yesterday Alphabet dropped about 5%, its worst day in more than a year.

Amazon also fell roughly 4% to 5%.

There was no single disaster headline.

Instead, the market appears to be reacting to growing concerns around the entire AI story.

First is spending.

Big Tech is spending at a scale that is almost impossible to ignore.

Alphabet, Amazon, Microsoft, and Meta are expected to spend roughly $700 billion to $725 billion on AI infrastructure in 2026.

Data centers.

Chips.

GPUs.

Power.

The whole buildout.

For years, investors rewarded this strategy.

The bigger the AI investment, the more bullish the reaction.

Now some investors are asking a different question:

When does all this spending actually pay off?

The second concern is competition.

Alphabet has seen high-profile AI researchers leave for rivals like OpenAI and Anthropic.

In an industry where talent matters, that creates questions about who will actually lead the next phase of AI.

Then there is the China factor.

New models from China continue to challenge the idea that only companies spending hundreds of billions can build competitive AI.

That creates a difficult problem for the biggest players.

What if the AI race is not won by whoever spends the most?

What if the technology becomes cheaper and easier to copy?

The AI story is not dead.

But the market may be moving from excitement to a more uncomfortable phase.

Investors are no longer just asking who can build AI.

They are asking whether the price of winning is worth it.