How did AI stocks perform last week? 33 of the 34 on this board fell
23 August 2026 · 4 min read
The short answer: badly, and almost all of it happened on one day. Over the five sessions from the 14 August close to the 21 August close, 33 of the 34 names on this board fell. The only advancer was Marvell, at +6.77%. Cap-weighted, the complex gave up 5.10%; the median name lost 6.84%. Sentiment across the board fell from 56 to 49 — out of Warm and into Neutral — and the count of names reading Hot went from 11 to zero.
The week was really one session
Read the endpoints only and this looks like a steady five-day slide. It was not. Three of the five sessions were unremarkable, and two were not.
Tuesday is the rarest reading this board produces: not one of the 34 names closed higher. Chips, optics, memory, neoclouds, equipment and power all fell together, which is what a complex-wide move looks like rather than a rotation between parts of it. Wednesday added most of the rest. Monday, Thursday and Friday together were roughly flat.
Which segments held up, and which did not
The neoclouds were the week, twice over: worst on price by a distance, and the only segment to fall two whole bands, from Warm to Cool. Nebius lost 21.09% and 50 sentiment points, CoreWeave 16.54%, and Applied Digital gave up 52 points, the largest single drop on the board. All six names fell.
At the other end, the three least-damaged segments are the ones nearest the manufacturing base. TSMC lost 1.74% and finished the week with a higher reading than it started.
The one name that rose ended with a worse score
Marvell's +6.77% was the only positive number on the board, and its sentiment score still fell, from 58 to 54. That is not a contradiction, it is the arithmetic: it gained 9.85% on Wednesday and 5.79% on Thursday, then gave back 5.57% on Friday. The score is measured at the close of the last session, and momentum is one of its six inputs. A name can win the week and still be going the wrong way on the day the reading is taken.
Five scores rose while almost nothing did
Applied Materials gained 30 sentiment points and Broadcom 28, while both fell on the week. Neither is a hidden strength signal. Both had crashed on 14 August itself — Applied Materials 5.12%, Broadcom 5.94% — so the window opens on a reading already at the floor. Broadcom started the week Frozen at 13. Getting back to 41 required no recovery at all, only the absence of another 6% day.
This is the same endpoint artefact we flagged in Are memory stocks cooling off?, in the opposite direction. A start-to-finish comparison of a bounded score inherits whatever happened on the first day of the window.
One reading is missing, deliberately
Western Digital's sentiment score for Friday 21 August is not quoted here, and is excluded from the segment and board figures above. The snapshot recorded that session carries a price of $186.40, against a bar close of $459.44 — a bad quote, not a stock move. The score built on it is therefore meaningless, so it is withheld rather than printed. Western Digital's price move for the week, −9.70%, comes from the daily bar series and is sound. Every other figure on this page is drawn from the same bars, which is why the price table and the score table disagree about one name and only one.
What this does and does not tell you
The sentiment score is built entirely from price and volume. It has no view on why Tuesday happened, and this page is not going to invent one: a week in which every single name fell together is, on the evidence available here, a fact about prices and nothing more. What the board can say precisely is where the damage landed — concentrated in the most leveraged, least profitable end of the complex, and lightest on the foundries and tool makers.
Prices are daily closes from this site's own bar series, dated in New York. Sentiment readings are the recorded snapshots for 14 and 21 August 2026. Segment and board scores are weighted by market capitalisation on each date. The live cards above update with the market; the tables do not.
Frequently asked questions
How did AI stocks perform last week?
Poorly. Over the five sessions to 21 August 2026, 33 of the 34 AI silicon names on this board fell. The complex lost 5.10% cap-weighted and the median name lost 6.84%. Board sentiment fell from 56 to 49, and the number of names reading Hot went from 11 to zero.
Which AI stock rose last week?
Marvell, and only Marvell, at +6.77% over the week to 21 August 2026. Its sentiment score still fell from 58 to 54, because it gave back 5.57% on the Friday and momentum is measured at the last close.
Which AI segment fell the most last week?
The neoclouds, by a wide margin: down 16.43% cap-weighted, with all six names lower. Segment sentiment fell 40 points from 69 to 29, from Warm to Cool. Nebius lost 21.09% and Applied Digital gave up 52 sentiment points, the largest single drop on the board.
Was the fall spread across the week?
No. Tuesday 18 August was down 4.08% cap-weighted with zero of 34 names advancing, and Wednesday added 2.15% with three advancing. Monday, Thursday and Friday together were roughly flat.
Why did some sentiment scores rise in a week when almost everything fell?
Because a start-to-finish comparison inherits the first day of the window. Applied Materials and Broadcom both crashed on 14 August, the day the window opens, so their scores began at or near the floor. Both fell on the week in price while their readings rose.
Sources
- ChipSentiment - live board - current prices, five-day changes and sentiment for all 34 names
- ChipSentiment - neocloud segment - cap-weighted segment sentiment history and the six constituents
- How the ChipSentiment score is calculated - the six price and volume components and their weights
All figures are computed from this site's own price data — daily closes from the bar series and the sentiment snapshots recorded at each session close. No external source is quoted, and no reason is attributed to any move. Western Digital's 21 August sentiment reading was rejected as unsound and is excluded, as explained above.