Palantir and CrowdStrike stocks tumble as Wall Street dumps software’s AI winners

Wall Street dumped software’s AI winners Thursday and mostly left the losers alone. Palantir (PLTR) and CrowdStrike (CRWD) both fell nearly 10%, while Salesforce (CRM) and Adobe (ADBE) lost 2% or less.

The sell-off that slaughtered chip stocks spread to the software names most tied to the AI build-out. Palantir shed about $40 billion in market value in its worst day since February. The stock is now roughly a quarter below its Oct. 9 record and closed just above its 200-day moving average.

It had plenty of company. Cloudflare (NET), Rubrik (RBRK), Okta (OKTA), Palo Alto Networks (PANW), and Oracle (ORCL) all posted steep losses.

The stocks hit hardest were the ones that had run the farthest. Before Thursday, CrowdStrike had roughly doubled this year, Okta had more than doubled, and Palo Alto was up nearly 90%.

The names holding up have been this year’s punching bags. Intuit (INTU) is down nearly half in 2026, and Adobe and ServiceNow (NOW) are each off about 30%, beaten down by fears that AI will eat into their businesses. After a year of heavy selling, they have far less to give back.

The trigger is the same one hitting chipmakers. Democrats won control of both chambers of Congress after a campaign in which candidates in both parties took aim at AI data centers. Software tied to the AI build-out trades right alongside the hardware. Nvidia (NVDA) has lost nearly $1.4 trillion since its October record.

Software as a group held up better than chips. The iShares Expanded Tech-Software ETF (IGV) fell less than half as much as the VanEck Semiconductor ETF (SMH). That’s partly because software was already down. The fund is about 16% below its September 2025 record after a steep slide earlier this year.

One AI software stock bucked the sell-off. AppLovin (APP) jumped 31% after strong quarterly results and an upbeat outlook, adding back much of what Palantir lost. Even so, the stock is still down roughly half for the year.

For the rest of AI software, Washington is the new worry. The stocks that had the best year are now the ones with the most to lose.

Internal AI tools helped analyze interview transcripts, research, and draft this post. Humans reviewed, edited, and fact-checked this post before publication.

Follow Jared Blikre on X @SPYJared or email him at [email protected].