Applied Digital (APLD) news that moved the stock

What happened

Democrats' midterm sweep of Congress produced a dramatic divergence in the AI trade on Wednesday. Shares of Amazon surged ~7.4% to a three-month high, with Meta, Alphabet and Microsoft gaining 2-6%+, Apple jumping ~7% to a record high (retaking the $5T+ valuation and the world's-most-valuable-company title from Nvidia), powering a rally Reuters estimated could add more than $750B in combined market value. Meanwhile the stocks tied directly to the AI data-center buildout plunged: CoreWeave fell ~9%, Applied Digital and Iren dropped 6-13%, and neocloud names sold off broadly. Nvidia slipped ~2% and Tesla/SpaceX fell ~4%.

What happened

CoreWeave shares plunged over 15% Wednesday — the worst performer in the Nasdaq 100 — after a selloff in its corporate bonds pushed yields to distressed levels: its 9.625% notes due 2032 traded at $79.50 with the yield touching 15.06%, up from 13.42% at the start of October, while its 2031 and 2030 notes also fell sharply. The bond rout gained wide attention after venture capitalist Chamath Palihapitiya posted late Tuesday that the AI buildout is increasingly funded by debt with private credit playing a much bigger role, prompting Elon Musk to reply 'Yikes.' The Financial Times reported Wednesday that CoreWeave is courting life insurers' capital pools to fund its AI infrastructure spending. CEO Mike Intrator told staff the market is acting 'irrationally,' citing a $104.2B revenue backlog plus $25B+ in net new Q3 customer commitments. Oracle fell ~9% in the same session as investors questioned the funding of its $165B Project Jupiter data-center build amid negative free cash flow and a recent credit downgrade to BBB-, and Reuters reported CDS costs for Oracle and CoreWeave surged to record highs.