New York, Feb 19, 2026, 16:44 EST — After-hours
- AMD rose 1.6% after a report it will guarantee a $300 million Crusoe loan tied to its AI chips
- Nvidia was little changed as investors kept parsing its multi-year AI chip supply deal with Meta
- Chip stocks lagged, with the iShares Semiconductor ETF down 0.6%
Advanced Micro Devices climbed on Thursday while Nvidia barely moved, leaving AI stocks mixed into after-hours trade as investors weighed chip demand signals against fresh worries over how the boom gets financed.
The moves came after Wall Street ended lower, and traders again leaned into a simple question that has been driving the AI trade: are the earnings arriving fast enough to justify the prices. “Not everyone’s going to win and not all expectations are going to be met,” said Keith Buchanan, senior portfolio manager at GLOBALT Investments. (Reuters)
AMD gained after Reuters reported the chipmaker is set to provide a $300 million loan guarantee for cloud startup Crusoe to buy and deploy AMD’s AI chips, citing The Information. The report said AMD would lease back its chips if Crusoe cannot line up customers, a structure that can cut borrowing costs but also feeds a market debate over “circular deals” — where chip sellers help finance buyers that, in turn, buy more chips. (Reuters)
Nvidia, by contrast, has been leaning on scale and long contracts. It said this week it signed a multi-year agreement to sell Meta Platforms millions of its current and future AI chips, including Blackwell now and Rubin later, as well as Grace and Vera central processors. Nvidia’s Ian Buck said Meta has already tested Vera and “the results look very promising.” (Investing)
That Meta deal helped lift Nvidia and other AI-linked names a day earlier, but the follow-through has been uneven. “They were expensive and they’ve gotten cheaper,” said Ross Mayfield, an investment strategy analyst at Baird, describing the dip-buying that showed up after the sector’s pullback. (Reuters)
Outside the U.S., spending headlines are still landing. India’s Yotta Data Services said it will spend over $2 billion on Nvidia’s latest chips to build an AI computing hub, with more than 20,000 Blackwell Ultra chips expected to be deployed by August, Reuters reported. (Reuters)
Big tech was mixed alongside the chips. Microsoft fell 0.3% and Alphabet slipped 0.2%, while Broadcom edged up and Taiwan Semiconductor and Arm dipped. The Nasdaq tracker QQQ ended down 0.4% and the S&P 500 tracker SPY eased 0.3%.
Still, the upside case rests on the same thing it has for months: large buyers keep signing checks, and the supply chain keeps expanding. The downside is that financing structures draw regulators’ eyes, customers stretch out delivery schedules, or in-house chips and alternatives take more share than expected.
The next hard test is close. Nvidia is due to discuss fourth-quarter and full-year fiscal 2026 results on Feb. 25, with investors looking for demand, margins and any change in the pace of orders tied to the new Blackwell and upcoming Rubin platforms. (Nvidia)
