AI chip stocks suffered one of their worst sessions in months Wednesday as the Federal Reserve held benchmark interest rates steady, then spooked fixed-income markets with language implying the central bank is falling behind on inflation. The SOXX semiconductor ETF dropped 5.4% to $465.00. The Nasdaq Composite fell 1.7% to 24,442.94, slipping more than 10% below its all-time high into correction territory. The S&P 500 slid 1.5% to 7,316.15. Enterprise SaaS names diverged sharply: Datadog gained 5.3% and ServiceNow gained 4.7% as fund managers rotated out of hardware into near-term earnings catalysts. StartupHub.ai data shows 340 active companies in the semiconductor and AI chip space we track, with Seed-to-Series-B rounds still the most common funding stages - a signal that private capital has not followed public markets into retreat.
Top AI stocks today: July 29, 2026
| Ticker | Close | Day | 1mo | YTD |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| $DDOG | $264.20 | +5.31% | +1.47% | +97.50% |
| $NOW | $115.76 | +4.65% | +16.60% | -21.49% |
| $SNOW | $282.90 | +4.64% | +11.16% | +30.54% |
| $CRM | $188.38 | +3.79% | +20.25% | -25.72% |
| $MNDY | $90.25 | +3.63% | +24.67% | -37.07% |
| $MU | $739.00 | -9.94% | -35.98% | +134.29% |
| $SMCI | $25.70 | -9.67% | -12.38% | -16.99% |
| $CRWV | $60.82 | -9.63% | -38.90% | -23.32% |
| $ACMR | $65.30 | -9.33% | -48.54% | +45.50% |
| $SOUN | $5.70 | -8.65% | -11.90% | -46.23% |
Micron leads the chip carnage, down nearly 10%
Micron Technology Inc. (NASDAQ: MU) fell 9.94% to $739.00, the steepest single-session loss in our coverage universe and an extension of a brutal five-day slide of 25.4%. The drop comes roughly five weeks after Micron reported blowout fiscal third-quarter results: revenue of $41.46 billion exceeded the $35.25 billion consensus estimate, and EPS of $25.11 demolished the $20.28 forecast, with data-center sales rising nearly sevenfold year over year, per Micron's investor-relations filing. Wednesday's move looks primarily macro-driven - the Fed's hawkish-by-omission statement lifted yields and compressed the high multiples AI chip stocks accumulated through mid-2026. MU retains a 134% year-to-date gain entering the next leg of the AI memory cycle.
Datadog surges 5% while AI chip stocks crumble
Datadog Inc. (NASDAQ: DDOG) rose 5.31% to $264.20, the largest single-session gain in the portfolio on a day when nearly every other AI name retreated. The move is a pre-earnings rotation: Datadog reports fiscal Q2 results on August 6, and investors are positioning ahead of what they expect to be another strong beat after the company crossed $1 billion in quarterly revenue for the first time in Q1 2026, growing 32% year over year, with annual recurring revenue exceeding $4 billion. Benchmark raised its price target on DDOG to $330 in July 2026, per TradingKey. ServiceNow (NYSE: NOW, +4.65% on exceptionally heavy volume), Snowflake (NYSE: SNOW, +4.64%), Salesforce (NYSE: CRM, +3.79%), and monday.com (NASDAQ: MNDY, +3.63%) followed the same logic - fund managers rotating into SaaS names with near-term binary catalysts and away from hardware exposure. For investors researching the best AI stocks to buy in July 2026, today's SaaS divergence is the clearest signal of where institutional money is moving ahead of the August earnings cycle.
CoreWeave and Super Micro give back their July gains
CoreWeave Inc. (NASDAQ: CRWV) dropped 9.63% to $60.82, extending a one-month loss of 38.9% and erasing gains logged in early July. Super Micro Computer Inc. (NASDAQ: SMCI) fell 9.67% to $25.70, despite having surged roughly 20% the prior week after disclosing record fiscal Q4 orders exceeding $60 billion and gross margins of 15-17% against prior guidance of 8.2-8.4%, per Benzinga. Profit-taking following an outsized gap in a smaller-cap AI infrastructure name is a well-worn pattern; the formal Q4 results due August 11 will be the next hard data point for the AI server supply chain narrative.
Notable but quieter
Applied Materials Inc. (NASDAQ: AMAT) dropped 8.40% to $436.45 as the wafer-fabrication equipment complex absorbed one of its heaviest single-day losses of the year; Lam Research Corp. (NASDAQ: LRCX) fell 6.40% in sympathy. ARM Holdings plc (NASDAQ: ARM) lost 8.11% to $224.89, putting the AI chip design-licensing name down 36.6% over one month - the premium for AI architecture exposure deflating alongside the broader cycle. Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (NASDAQ: AMD) shed 5.51% to $429.56. NVIDIA Corp. (NASDAQ: NVDA) dropped 3.55% to $190.01 on volume of 136.6 million shares, roughly 2-3x its typical daily print, yet retained a marginal 0.6% year-to-date gain. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (NYSE: TSM) fell 4.50% to $374.67 as South Korea's Kospi exchange triggered a circuit breaker for the second consecutive day - SK Hynix and Samsung tumbling 13% and 8% respectively, per Bloomberg - amplifying contagion across the entire global chip supply chain.