Dell leads data center stock sell-off as Barclays warns on enterprise AI timing

Dell shares plunged 11% on Wednesday, leading a sell-off in data center stocks amid fears that enterprise AI spending will not justify the infrastructure buildout. Barclays downgraded Dell, HPE, and NetApp, citing concerns about "enterprise AI timing." Hewlett-Packard Enterprise, Oracle, and Super Micro also declined, with Oracle dropping 9% and neocloud CoreWeave falling 15%. Barclays analysts lowered ratings to hold from buy, attributing strong enterprise revenues to the global memory shortage rather than a "meaningful AI inflection" in adoption. Businesses currently allocate only about 5% of IT budgets to AI, with just a quarter of that spend going to hardware. Barclays warned that normalizing memory prices could weigh on infrastructure revenue, as stocks were also hit by China's CXMT reporting progress on a new chip structure.