Alphabet Shares Fall Nearly 13% in Worst Day on Record, Erasing Hundreds of Billions in Value

Shares of Google parent Alphabet fell almost 13% on Thursday after its third-quarter earnings report, wiping out an estimated $482 billion to more than $500 billion in market value in its worst single trading day since its 2004 market debut. Search revenue rose 12% to about $63 billion, short of Wall Street's expectation of roughly $65 billion, as search growth slowed. Google Cloud revenue more than doubled to around $31 billion as businesses bought AI computing power. The decline was steeper than in the 2008 financial crisis and the 2020 Covid crash, and larger than Alphabet's previous record one-day loss of about $275 billion in July. It is the second-largest one-day market-value loss for a US-listed company, behind Nvidia's $593 billion in January 2025, when Chinese startup DeepSeek rattled the sector. One analyst wrote that the miss heightens fears that AI and agentic tools are taking share from Search and YouTube. Investors are also scrutinizing big tech's heavy AI spending, and lenders demanded tougher terms on AI debt deals this week.

NBC News, the left-leaning outlet, leads with a question, whether the AI bubble is about to pop. Its video report by Allie Canal links the selloff to big tech's spending and to AI's effect on the job market, and it gives a loss of "over $500 billion" without earnings detail. The Daily Mail, on the right, leads with records: a $482 billion wipeout, a 13% plunge, comparisons to 2008, 2020 and Nvidia's loss, and the earlier $275 billion drop. It uses dramatic words such as "wipeout," "rout" and "brutal," and gives the cloud and search figures. Both tie the drop to AI bubble fears and call it historic. They differ on the dollar figure and on emphasis: NBC widens to jobs and spending, while the Mail focuses on market history and expectations. Semafor, an independent outlet, stands apart by quoting analysts and noting lenders' tougher AI debt terms.