NEW YORK, January 1, 2026, 13:24 ET — Market closed
- U.S. markets were shut for the New Year’s Day holiday; data center-linked shares last closed lower on Dec. 31.
- Investors digested reports on xAI’s data-center buildout and a fresh China-linked chip demand headline.
- Traders are looking to Friday’s reopening and next week’s early read on U.S. factory activity.
Data center stocks ended 2025 on a softer note, with U.S. markets closed on Thursday for the New Year’s Day holiday and investors heading into 2026 still fixated on who captures the next leg of AI infrastructure spending.
The latest focus is on customer buildouts that can move the needle for suppliers of chips, servers and the power-and-cooling gear that keeps new facilities running. That matters as the market tries to separate durable demand from year-end positioning after an AI-driven run.
Elon Musk said on Tuesday his AI startup xAI bought a third building to expand its infrastructure, aiming to lift training capacity to nearly 2 gigawatts of compute power. xAI plans to start turning the warehouse into a data center in 2026, Reuters reported.
Musk wrote on X that the site, dubbed “MACROHARDRR,” would take xAI’s training compute to almost 2 gigawatts. Reuters cited The Information as reporting that the new data center and “Colossus 2” are near a natural-gas power plant xAI is building, amid environmental criticism of energy-hungry data centers. Reuters
In the last session of 2025 on Wednesday, Nvidia ended down 0.5% at $186.50, while Dell fell 1.6% to $125.88 and Super Micro Computer lost 1.3% to $29.27.
Other names tied to data center buildouts also slipped, including power-and-cooling supplier Vertiv, down 1.5% at $162.01. Data center operators Equinix and Digital Realty closed down 0.5% and 1.1%, respectively, while networking gear maker Arista Networks fell 1.1%.
Overseas demand remained in view after Reuters reported that ByteDance planned to spend about 100 billion yuan ($14.29 billion) on Nvidia AI chips in 2026 if the U.S. company is allowed to sell its H200 processors in China, citing the South China Morning Post. Reuters said it could not immediately verify the report.
The sector’s pullback came as Wall Street’s main indexes closed lower on Dec. 31 in light trading to cap 2025, with investors still weighing how quickly AI spending spreads beyond headline projects. “We think the next two years are going to be about the diffusion of AI capabilities throughout the economy,” Scott Ladner, chief investment officer at Horizon, said. Reuters
Before the next session on Friday, traders will watch whether early-January data resets rate expectations that can sway long-duration growth stocks, including many AI and data-center plays. Final S&P Global U.S. manufacturing PMI data is due at 9:45 a.m. ET, followed by U.S. construction spending at 10:00 a.m. ET.
Next week, the ISM manufacturing index is scheduled for Monday, Jan. 5, a closely followed snapshot of factory activity and input costs that can ripple through risk appetite.
Company catalysts are also lining up. Nvidia is set for a J.P. Morgan CES fireside chat on Jan. 6 and has scheduled its fourth-quarter fiscal 2026 financial results for Feb. 25, while Dell’s next earnings are scheduled for Feb. 26, according to Zacks.
