Nasdaq futures are down more than 2% after quarterly results from Amazon and Intel, whose shares are falling roughly 7% and 26% respectively. Both reported on Thursday, October 29, 2026.

Amazon down 7%, Intel sinks 26% after results

In after-hours trading, Amazon shares are sliding nearly 7%, to 227.51 dollars, while Intel is sinking 25.9% to 68.27 dollars.

E-commerce giant Amazon closed the third quarter of 2026 with earnings and revenue below consensus forecasts.

What frightened Wall Street most was cash flow, negative at -$42.4 billion. Investors fear that the massive AI infrastructure investments US Big Tech is making will not deliver the returns the giants expect, and will burn through their liquidity along the way.

A warning to that effect came on the eve of Amazon’s results from Alphabet-Google, which also suffered a sharp erosion of free cash flow. Alphabet’s stock closed Thursday down 13%, its worst single-day performance on record.

Amazon’s cash drain deepens 386% year on year

Amazon’s negative cash flow of $42.4 billion marks a 386% deterioration on an annual basis and is far worse than the -$7.6 billion free cash flow of the second quarter of 2026.

The company said the result is mainly attributable to increased purchases of property, plant and equipment tied to AI investments.

Capital expenditure jumped to 77.3 billion dollars in the quarter, more than double the 35.1 billion of a year earlier and well above the 58.7 billion expected by analysts polled by FactSet.

Net income came in at $20.69 billion, or $1.89 per share, down from $21.19 billion, or $1.95 per share, a year earlier. Amazon attributed the decline mainly to the $9.5 billion pre-tax gain from its investment in AI company Anthropic, booked in the third quarter of 2025.

Earnings per share of 1.89 dollars missed the 1.96 dollars expected. Revenue totaled 201.94 billion dollars, slightly below the 202.31 billion forecast.

Amazon Web Services revenue reached 45.98 billion dollars, essentially in line with the 45.29 billion expected. Advertising revenue came in at 19.64 billion dollars, below the $20.82 billion forecast.

Guidance disappointed as well. Amazon expects fourth-quarter 2026 revenue of between 240 and 247 billion dollars, a midpoint of 243.5 billion against analysts’ expectations of 244.5 billion dollars.

Intel hit by the PC market outlook

For Intel, the problem was guidance. The chipmaker said it expects the slowdown in the PC market to continue at least through the first half of 2027.

The division that includes the PC business posted a 5% drop in revenue, to 8.1 billion dollars.

Overall, Intel reported third-quarter revenue growth of 21%, to 16.5 billion dollars, while adjusted earnings per share rose to 0.52 dollars, from 0.23 dollars a year earlier. The company beat its own forecasts, but investors quickly turned to the weaker outlook for the following quarter.

Intel expects fourth-quarter revenue of between 15 and 16 billion dollars and adjusted earnings per share of 0.25 dollars. The midpoint implies a contraction of about 6% from the previous quarter, and expected adjusted EPS is less than half the third-quarter level.

One bright spot: revenue at Intel’s Data Center and AI division jumped 78% to 7.3 billion dollars. Those contrasting numbers show that strength in artificial intelligence does not automatically translate into equally positive results for the company as a whole.

Margin forecasts also weighed on the stock. Intel expects an adjusted gross margin of 38% in the current quarter, down from the 44.1% recorded in the third quarter.

Editor’s note

This article was originally published in Italian on money.it by Laura Naka Antonelli on October 30, 2026 as «Big Tech, allarme liquidità per la corsa all’AI. Futures Nasdaq -2%: anche Amazon brucia cassa, mentre Intel crolla del 26%». It has been translated and adapted for an international audience by the Money.it International desk.