Intel reported Q1 revenue of $13.58B (vs. $12.3B est.) and adjusted EPS of $0.29 (vs. $0.01 est.), its sixth consecutive beat. Data Center & AI revenue surged 22% YoY to $5.1B as agentic AI workloads drive renewed CPU demand alongside GPUs. Q2 guidance of $13.8B–$14.8B and $0.20 EPS also blew past consensus ($0.09). Shares closed at $66.78 (+2.3%) and rocketed to $80.10 (+20%) in after-hours. Jim Cramer declared "paranoid Intel is back"; Gene Munster called it early innings for the AI CPU cycle.
ServiceNow beat on Q1 revenue (up 22% YoY) and raised full-year subscription guidance to $15.74B–$15.78B, but shares cratered 17.5% as investors fixated on a ~75bps headwind from delayed Middle East deals and margin pressure from the $7.75B Armis cybersecurity acquisition. The drop triggered a sector-wide software selloff — Salesforce (CRM) fell 9%, Adobe (ADBE) 7.8%, Microsoft (MSFT) 3.2%. The iShares Expanded Tech-Software ETF lost 5.6% in one session.
TXN posted Q1 EPS of $1.68 (vs. $1.36 est.) and revenue of $4.83B (vs. $4.52B est.), up 19% YoY. Data center revenue exploded 90% YoY as its analog chips become essential for AI power management and signal processing. Q2 guidance of $5.0B–$5.4B revenue and $1.77–$2.05 EPS crushed consensus ($4.86B / $1.57). Shares hit a record close, their best single-day gain in 26 years.
IBM reported Q1 revenue of $15.9B (+9% YoY) and adjusted EPS of $1.91 (beat $1.81 est.), but shares fell 9.5% as consulting growth slowed to just 1% — the segment housing 80% of its $12.5B generative AI business. The market fears that tools like Claude Code could automate COBOL modernization and consulting work on IBM mainframes, echoing a 13.2% single-day drop in February when Anthropic first demonstrated this capability.
Tesla beat Q1 estimates (revenue $22.39B, +15.8% YoY; EPS $0.41) but the stock slid 3.6% after Musk raised 2026 capex guidance from $20B to $25B+ — a 67% YoY jump. Spending targets AI infrastructure, Optimus humanoid robots entering low-volume production, a $3B research chip fab shared with SpaceX/xAI, and Cybercab ramp. Musk warned of negative free cash flow in 2026 as Tesla builds six factories simultaneously.
The semiconductor-software gap hit extremes on April 23: the Philadelphia SE Semiconductor index is up ~40% YTD while the S&P 500 software & services index is down 13%. UBS strategist Kiran Ganesh noted traders are piling into AI infrastructure builders while pressuring software firms to prove AI won't cannibalize their businesses. The Nasdaq-100 has rallied 11% in April alone, masking violent rotation beneath the surface.
Stifel analyst Ruben Roy hiked AMD's target from $280 to $320 (Buy maintained), citing AI compute demand running above expectations across accelerated and general-purpose architectures. Multi-gigawatt commitments from Meta and OpenAI were flagged as key catalysts. AMD guided Q1 revenue of ~$9.8B (~32% YoY growth). The stock has surged 45% in April, and at ~$305 much of the upside is already priced.
Bloomberg reports Beijing is telling AI startups including Moonshot AI and StepFun to reject US capital without government approval — a direct response to Meta's $2B acquisition of Chinese AI startup Manus. The NDRC has delivered the guidance privately to several firms in recent weeks. This adds a formal regulatory layer to US-China AI capital flows and could chill cross-border VC investment in Chinese AI, further bifurcating the global AI ecosystem.
Salesforce dropped 9%, Adobe 7.8%, and Microsoft 3.2% on April 23 with zero company-specific news — pure contagion from the IBM/ServiceNow AI fear trade. The S&P 500 software index has now entered bear market territory (-16% YTD), as investors question which enterprise software business models survive the AI agent era. Retail is starting to eye selective dip buys but institutional flow remains defensive.
Nvidia traded around $201.25 on April 23, holding above the psychological $200 level as the broader semiconductor rally continues. No company-specific catalyst, but NVDA benefits from the same AI infrastructure spending tide lifting TXN and INTC. Analysts still see ~38% upside, and Blackwell demand remains supply-constrained. Benzinga flagged $207.50 as the next resistance level, with $196.25 as key support.
