US technology stocks and Bitcoin rebounded strongly on a Friday in early February 2026 after three days of heavy selling driven by investor anxiety over the scale of Big Tech’s AI investments. The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite rose 1.9%, trimming its loss for the week to roughly 2%.
Nvidia led the recovery with a 7.3% gain, with Broadcom and Intel also jumping. Bitcoin bounced back from its lowest level since 2024 in the prior session, trading up about 12% at around $70,000, while Strategy — the bitcoin-accumulating company led by Michael Saylor — gained more than 24%. Amazon was the outlier: its shares fell 6.9% after the company said capital spending would reach $200 billion for the year.
A Broad Rebound Beyond Tech
Friday’s gains extended well past the AI names. The Russell 2000 index of economically sensitive small-cap stocks jumped 3.3%, the S&P 500 rose 1.7%, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average climbed more than 2% — closing above the 50,000 level for the first time, according to the Financial Times report on which this article is based.
The earlier selloff had two distinct drivers. The first was the sheer scale of announced AI infrastructure spending, which prompted questions about when the outlays will produce returns. The second was fear that AI itself would disrupt the business models of asset-light companies — data analytics providers, publishers, and software vendors — whose products AI tools may replicate.
Fabiana Fedeli, chief investment officer for equities at M&G, described the moment as the market rethinking its approach to AI, with investors becoming far more selective about which companies to back. Strategists at Pictet Asset Management saw the pullback as creating entry points, with dip-buying emerging as valuations became more palatable.
The Capex Question
Amazon, Google, Meta, and Microsoft unveiled plans to spend a combined $660 billion on AI build-out over the year, an increase of roughly 60% from their 2025 spending — figures that triggered fresh scrutiny of the gap between investment and demonstrated returns. Robeco’s global equities team voiced the concern directly: spending is surging in places where the outcome is not yet visible, forcing investors to judge company by company which ones are “in the right camp.” Wall Street analysis of Amazon’s $200 billion plan showed the same split between believers in the build-out and skeptics of its payback period.
The Anthropic Effect on Software Stocks
The week’s selloff in software shares had a specific catalyst: Anthropic’s release of open-source plug-ins for its Claude Code tool, tailored to corporate uses such as automating legal contract reviews. The launch sharpened fears that AI agents could displace established software vendors — a dynamic covered in more depth in this related piece on how Claude’s enterprise push shook the markets. The pressure spread to private credit groups, including Ares and Blue Owl, that have been significant lenders to software companies.
By Friday, some investors judged the software rout overdone. Caroline Shaw, multi-asset portfolio manager at Fidelity International, argued that mission-critical corporate software is unlikely to be replaced quickly by AI, and that the investment case was not broken — making the selloff, in her view, more of a buying opportunity.
Limitations and What to Watch
This is a snapshot of one volatile week, and single-session moves are weak evidence of any trend — several of the figures here (index levels, Bitcoin’s price, individual stock moves) changed materially within days. Aggregate capex estimates also vary by source and by which companies are included: the FT’s $660 billion figure for four hyperscalers sits alongside other 2026 estimates ranging from roughly $600 billion to $725 billion as guidance was updated through earnings season. The durable questions the week posed are worth tracking: whether hyperscaler capital spending produces measurable revenue before investor patience runs out, and whether AI-driven disruption fears for software vendors show up in actual churn and contract data rather than share prices.
