Before the AI news, a quick arrest: got a scam email or a fake website? Our Spam & Phishing Takedown Service reports it to the host and registrar and gets it taken down, from C$29 a month.
What's New in AI: The $2.5 Trillion Tech Sell-Off, Micron's HBM Boom, IREN, AAOI and IonQ
Five stories shaped AI from 2 to 5 November 2026. A $2.5 trillion tech sell-off pushed the Nasdaq into a correction on fears the midterms could slow data center building, Micron guided to a $61.5 billion quarter on sold-out HBM memory, IREN's AI cloud revenue nearly tripled, AAOI and IonQ beat estimates, and New Jersey's Vineland AI data center faced a federal lawsuit threat.
What changed since our last edition
- Markets: on 1 November the worry was the cost of the AI build-out. By 5 November it was whether the build-out slows at all, after the midterm results.
- Memory: Micron's guidance put AI memory, not just GPUs, at the centre of the story, and Qualcomm warned that memory costs are hurting its sales.
- Miners and neoclouds: IREN showed how fast a bitcoin miner can become an AI cloud, while CoreWeave and Nebius fell 10% to 15% ahead of their own results next week.
- Data center politics: the fight over AI data center emissions moved from town halls to a federal Clean Air Act notice in New Jersey.
A $2.5 trillion tech sell-off pushes the Nasdaq into a correction
Wall Street lost about $2.5 trillion of market value on Thursday, 5 November 2026, CNN reported. The Nasdaq Composite fell 5.52% and closed in correction, more than 10% below its 6 October record. The Nasdaq 100 dropped 6.36%, its worst day since March 2020, the chipmaker index fell 12.3%, Nvidia lost 9.3% and the VIX volatility index jumped about 70%. The Dow closed 1,833 points lower, erasing Wednesday's post-election rally.
The trigger was politics: investors priced in a slower AI build-out after Democratic gains, including Texas Governor-elect Gina Hinojosa, who campaigned on a temporary data center moratorium and on cutting tax incentives for data center builders. AI cloud stocks were hit hardest, with CoreWeave down about 10% and Nebius down about 15%. South Korea's Kospi fell almost 9% at Friday's open, triggering a trading halt.
Micron stock and AI memory demand: HBM sold out into 2027
Micron is the clearest read on AI memory demand. Its fiscal Q4 2026 results showed revenue of $54.2 billion, up 379% year over year, an 87% gross margin and earnings of $33.42 a share. Full-year fiscal 2026 revenue reached $133.2 billion. For fiscal Q1 2027 it guided to $61.5 billion, plus or minus $1.5 billion, well above the roughly $57 billion analysts expected.
The driver is HBM, the stacked high-bandwidth memory that sits beside every AI GPU. Micron says most of its calendar 2027 HBM volume is already sold at much higher prices than 2026, and it expects HBM demand to grow faster than ordinary DRAM through 2028. The flip side showed up on 5 November: Qualcomm fell 9.5% after warning that higher memory chip costs are hurting sales.
IREN's AI cloud revenue nearly triples to $200 million
IREN reported fiscal Q1 2027 results on 5 November: revenue of $228 million, up 66% in a quarter, with AI cloud revenue of about $200 million, up 182%. Bitcoin mining revenue fell to $28 million. Its contract backlog rose 22% to $20.3 billion, but it pushed its $4 billion annualised revenue target from year-end to 31 January 2027.
IREN is the poster child for bitcoin miners pivoting to AI and HPC: with hashprice near $33 per PH/s per day, AI leases pay far more for the same power.
AAOI stock: AI optical revenue more than doubles, guidance splits investors
Applied Optoelectronics (AAOI), which makes the optical transceivers that link GPUs inside AI data centers, reported Q3 2026 revenue of $269.9 million, up 127.5% year over year, with non-GAAP earnings of $0.17 a share, $0.03 above estimates, and GAAP net income of $6.3 million.
It guided Q4 revenue to $385 million to $420 million. Shares had already fallen about 18% intraday in the sell-off and initially dropped about 8% more after the report as investors parsed the guidance range.
IonQ stock beats and raises its 2026 outlook
IonQ reported Q3 2026 revenue of $173.8 million, well above the roughly $141.7 million estimate, and an adjusted loss of $0.29 a share against an expected $0.31. It raised full-year 2026 revenue guidance to $505 million to $515 million and ended the quarter with about $3.7 billion of cash and investments.
Shares rose roughly 3% to 5% after hours, depending on the report, bucking the day's sell-off.
Vineland AI data center faces a Clean Air Act lawsuit threat
The 300 MW DataOne campus in Vineland, New Jersey, built for Nebius to serve Microsoft, ran 62 natural gas generators without air permits and drew a record $1.07 million state fine in September. A community group represented by Earthjustice has now sent a notice of intent to sue under the federal Clean Air Act, and a state permit deadline fell on 6 November.
Full story: DataOne Vineland AI data center emissions. Water is the other flashpoint; see AI data center water usage.
Price an AI build before CoreWeave and Nebius report next week
CoreWeave reports on 10 November and Nebius on 12 November, and both will be judged on capex, power online and cost per megawatt. Our AI Build Configurator prices a build for any Canadian province or US state, from new neocloud halls to bitcoin miner retrofits, with four cooling options. Small miners can also check our new guide to selling or renting hashrate. Site Screening Reports start at C$950.