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Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang makes a speech at an event at COMPUTEX forum in Taipei, Taiwan June 4, 2024. 

Ann Wang | Reuters

Since briefly becoming the world’s most valuable company last week, Nvidia has dropped for three consecutive trading days and is now down 13% from its peak.

Monday’s slide was the chipmaker’s second-steepest drop of the year, as the stock fell 6.7% to $118.11. Nvidia’s decline brought with it a slide in chipmakers and other tech companies that have been tied to the artificial intelligence boom.

Super Micro Computer, which sells servers packed with Nvidia’s AI chips, slid 8.7 percent, and Dell, which competes in that market, fell 5.2%.

Chip designer Arm dropped 5.8%, while semiconductor giants Qualcomm and Broadcom dropped 5.5% and 3.7%, respectively.

Many of those companies have been some of the biggest gainers in the last couple years as investors bet heavily that they’ll be the prime beneficiaries of a wave of AI spending.

Nvidia’s value has nearly tripled in the past year even after the three-day slump. Last week, it topped Apple and Microsoft as the most valuable U.S. company with a market capitalization over $3 trillion before giving up some of those gains. Nvidia was the fourth-biggest loser in the S&P 500 on Monday. Super Micro is still up almost 200% in 2024.

Investors may be taking an opportunity to lock in gains after a few hot months.

“I don’t think the party is over, but it’s had a heck of a run and there are so many other places in technology that offer better attractive risk/reward,” Hightower’s Stephanie Link told CNBC on Friday, calling Nvidia shares “overloved.”

Nvidia says demand for its prized AI graphics processing units (GPUs) remains high, as companies including Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Oracle, and Meta buy billions of dollars worth of the chips to power their data centers and cloud services.

Later this year, Nvidia will start shipping its next-generation AI chips, called Blackwell, that some analysts say could kick off another cycle with significant growth for the chipmaker and its partners.

Nvidia’s performance “is going to continue for the next 18-24 months,” Constellation Research founder Ray Wang said on CNBC’s Squawk Box on Monday. “I think it’s a good time to buy the dip.”

WATCH: Nvidia will continue to have corrections but investors should stick with it

Nvidia will continue to experience many corrections along the way, says Alger CEO

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Tesla shares drop 7% in premarket trading after Elon Musk says he is launching a political party

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Tesla shares drop 7% in premarket trading after Elon Musk says he is launching a political party

White House Senior Advisor Elon Musk walks to the White House after landing in Marine One on the South Lawn with U.S. President Donald Trump (not pictured) on March 9, 2025 in Washington, DC.

Samuel Corum | Getty Images News | Getty Images

Tesla shares fell in premarket trade on Monday after CEO Elon Musk announced plans to form a new political party.

The stock was down 7.13% by 4:27 a.m. E.T.

Musk said over the weekend that the party would be called the “America Party” and could focus “on just 2 or 3 Senate seats and 8 to 10 House districts.” He suggested this would be “enough to serve as the deciding vote on contentious laws, ensuring that they serve the true will of the people.”

The billionaire’s involvement in politics has been a point of contention for investors. Musk earlier this year was part of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency and worked closely with President Donald Trump — a move seen as potentially hurting Tesla’s brand.

Musk left DOGE in May, which helped Tesla’s stock.

Now tech billionaire’s reinvolvement in the political arena is making investors nervous.

“Very simply Musk diving deeper into politics and now trying to take on the Beltway establishment is exactly the opposite direction that Tesla investors/shareholders want him to take during this crucial period for the Tesla story,” Dan Ives, global head of technology research at Wedbush Securities, said in a note on Sunday.

“While the core Musk supporters will back Musk at every turn no matter what, there is broader sense of exhaustion from many Tesla investors that Musk keeps heading down the political track.”

Musk’s previous political foray earned him Trump’s praise in the early days, but he has since drawn the ire of the U.S. president.

The two have clashed over various areas of policy, including Trump’s spending bill which Musk has said would increase America’s debt burden. Musk has taken issue to particular cuts to tax credits and support for solar and wind energy and electric vehicles.

Trump on Sunday called Musk’s move to form a political party “ridiculous,” adding that the Tesla boss had gone “completely off the rails.”

Musk is contending with more than just political turmoil. Tesla reported a 14% year-on-year decline in car deliveries in the second quarter, missing expectations. The company is facing rising competition, especially in its key market, China.

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AI chip startup Groq expands with first European data center

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AI chip startup Groq expands with first European data center

Jonathan Ross, chief executive officer of Groq Inc., during the GenAI Summit in San Francisco, California, US, on Thursday, May 30, 2024.

David Paul | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Artificial intelligence semiconductor startup Groq announced Monday it has established its first data center in Europe as it steps up its international expansion.

Groq, which is backed by investment arms of Samsung and Cisco, said the data center will be located in Helsinki, Finland and is in partnership with Equinix.

Groq is looking to take advantage of rising demand for AI services in Europe following other U.S. firms which have also ramped up investment in the region. The Nordics in particular is a popular location for the data facilities as the region has easy access to renewable energy and cooler climates. Last month, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang was in Europe and signed several infrastructure deals, including data centers.

Groq, which is valued at $2.8 billion, designs a chip that the company calls a language processing unit (LPU). It is designed for inferencing rather training. Inferencing is when a pre-trained AI model interprets live data to come up with a result, much like the answers that are produced by popular chatbots.

While Nvidia has a stranglehold on the chips required for training huge AI models with its graphics processing units (GPUs), there is a swathe of startups hoping to take a slice of the pie when it comes to inferencing. SambaNova; Ampere, a company SoftBank is in the process of purchasing; Cerebras and Fractile, are all looking to join the AI inference race.

European politicians have been pushing the notion of sovereign AI — where data centers must be located in the region. Data centers that are located closer to users also help improve the speed of services.

Global data center builder Equinix connects different cloud providers together, such as Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud, making it easier for businesses to have multiple vendors. Groq’s LPUs will be installed inside the Equinix data center allowing businesses to access Groq’s inference capabilities via Equinix.

Groq currently has data centers in the U.S. and Canada and Saudi Arabia with its technology.

Don’t miss Groq CEO Jonathan Ross on Squawk Box Europe at 7:45 a.m. London time.

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Inside a Utah desert facility preparing humans for life on Mars

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Inside a Utah desert facility preparing humans for life on Mars

Hidden among the majestic canyons of the Utah desert, about 7 miles from the nearest town, is a small research facility meant to prepare humans for life on Mars.

The Mars Society, a nonprofit organization that runs the Mars Desert Research Station, or MDRS, invited CNBC to shadow one of its analog crews on a recent mission.

MDRS is the best analog astronaut environment,” said Urban Koi, who served as health and safety officer for Crew 315. “The terrain is extremely similar to the Mars terrain and the protocols, research, science and engineering that occurs here is very similar to what we would do if we were to travel to Mars.”

SpaceX CEO and Mars advocate Elon Musk has said his company can get humans to Mars as early as 2029.

The 5-person Crew 315 spent two weeks living at the research station following the same procedures that they would on Mars.

David Laude, who served as the crew’s commander, described a typical day.

“So we all gather around by 7 a.m. around a common table in the upper deck and we have breakfast,” he said. “Around 8:00 we have our first meeting of the day where we plan out the day. And then in the morning, we usually have an EVA of two or three people and usually another one in the afternoon.”

An EVA refers to extravehicular activity. In NASA speak, EVAs refer to spacewalks, when astronauts leave the pressurized space station and must wear spacesuits to survive in space.

“I think the most challenging thing about these analog missions is just getting into a rhythm. … Although here the risk is lower, on Mars performing those daily tasks are what keeps us alive,” said Michael Andrews, the engineer for Crew 315.

Watch the video to find out more.

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