Astera Labs stock slides again after Amazon warrant disclosure, margin outlook keeps traders wary

New York, Feb 12, 2026, 13:45 EST — Regular session

• Astera Labs shares dropped roughly 9% in afternoon trading, following a choppy start to the session.
• Investors are weighing a slimmer gross-margin forecast against the company’s ramped-up spending plans.
• Filings showed a warrant connected to Amazon, linked to as much as $6.5 billion in purchases.

Astera Labs dropped 8.8% to $131.00 Thursday afternoon, erasing earlier gains. Traders zeroed in on recent filings and the company’s quarterly outlook.

Astera occupies a pivotal but unforgiving stretch of the AI data-center supply chain, where high expectations collide with a low appetite for surprises. The company’s latest disclosures this week showed rapid growth, yet raised fresh concerns about dilution, customer pull-through, and escalating spending needed to stay competitive.

Margins are on traders’ minds. For this quarter, Astera is projecting gross margin around 74%—that’s down from the 75.6% it reported in the fourth quarter. The company also expects operating expenses to climb.

Astera posted a 92% jump in fourth-quarter revenue, bringing in $270.6 million. The company’s non-GAAP earnings landed at 58 cents a share, stripping out items like stock-based compensation. Looking ahead, Astera is guiding for first-quarter revenue between $286 million and $297 million, with non-GAAP earnings estimated around 53 to 54 cents per share. (Source: 1 )

The company pointed to an uptick in Scorpio X-Series smart fabric switch production and announced an expansion into custom connectivity products linked to NVLink Fusion. Leo CXL memory controllers are being used for memory expansion trials inside Microsoft Azure virtual machines, the company added. It’s also launching a new design center in Israel and putting more money into R&D.

Astera, in a separate filing, disclosed it has struck a transaction agreement with Amazon.com and granted an Amazon affiliate a warrant covering up to 3,262,299 shares at $142.82 each. The warrant will vest as Amazon and its affiliates buy up to $6.5 billion worth of Astera’s products, with the arrangement running through Feb. 5, 2033, according to the filing. (Source: 2 )

Think of a warrant as a kind of option—one that lets more shares hit the market down the road. Tying it to sales doesn’t really erase concerns about dilution, particularly if the buyer happens to double as a top customer.

In a separate filing, CFO Michael Tate told the company he plans to retire as chief financial officer on March 2, stepping into a strategic advisor spot. Desmond Lynch, who served as CFO at Rambus most recently, will move into the CFO position. (Source: 3 )

CEO Jitendra Mohan called it a quarter of “strong financial results,” while Tate sounded upbeat: “The future of the company is extremely bright.” Astera is “an established leader within AI connectivity,” Lynch added in the statement. (Source: 4 )

The risk is clear enough: should major clients delay purchases or stretch out deployments, that purchase-linked warrant might not deliver the revenue investors are counting on. At the same time, rising operating expenses could start weighing on results before any benefit from fresh products kicks in.

March 3 shapes up as the next key checkpoint. That’s when Astera hits the stage at Morgan Stanley’s Technology, Media & Telecom Conference in San Francisco, and investors plan to dig in—probing for specifics on margins, spending plans, and the state of demand among big customers. (Source: 5 )