Meta, Tesla Earnings to Test AI Trade After Chip Stock Selloff

The earnings bar has shifted: after the chip selloff, the market is no longer rewarding AI exposure on its own, but asking whether the profit growth can carry the cost of financing it. Meta and Tesla are useful tests because they sit on opposite sides of that question—one is a hyperscaler spending heavily on AI infrastructure, the other a capital-intensive manufacturer whose AI narrative is more tangential to its core business. What matters most is any signal on how these companies are funding their buildouts and whether debt costs are starting to bite. Whether the broader AI trade stabilizes after these prints is the open question.