What Happened?
Shares of networking chips designer Marvell Technology (NASDAQ: MRVL) fell 5.1% in the morning session as markets continued to struggle following the broad selloff triggered by weak economic data in the previous week. On Friday, February 21, 2025, the S&P 500 dropped 1.7%, and the Nasdaq fell 2.2% after PMI numbers showed the U.S. services sector contracted, and the University of Michigan's consumer sentiment index came in below expectations.
Adding to Wall Street's anxiety, rumors swirled that Microsoft is trimming some data center projects, raising concerns that AI-related investments may get a little too bloated.
TD Cowen analyst Michael Elias flagged three key findings from his research. He noted that Microsoft "1) cancelled leases in the U.S. totaling 'a couple of hundred MWs' with at least two private data center operators, 2) has pulled back on the conversion of SOQ's to leases, and 3) has re-allocated a considerable portion of its international spend to the U.S."
Jefferies analysts see this as more of a regional spending adjustment, adding that Microsoft executives "strongly refute" any major shift in their data center strategy.
Investors' attention now turns to Nvidia's upcoming earnings report, a crucial barometer of AI infrastructure demand. The chip giant's Q4 2024 results and forward guidance will be closely scrutinized for signals on whether AI spending remains strong or is beginning to taper off. With so many moving pieces, investors are bracing for a volatile week ahead, while hoping for clarity.
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What The Market Is Telling Us
Marvell Technology’s shares are very volatile and have had 29 moves greater than 5% over the last year. In that context, today’s move indicates the market considers this news meaningful but not something that would fundamentally change its perception of the business.
The previous big move we wrote about was 28 days ago when the stock dropped 16.6% on the news that stocks heavily tied to the AI market took a hit after Chinese artificial intelligence startup DeepSeek released a new large language model (DeepSeek-R1) that ranks competitively on key global benchmarks (coding competitions, math evaluations), uses less advanced semiconductor chips, costs significantly less to build (at $5.5 million - excluding non-compute costs), and has already achieved strong adoption after topping the iPhone App Store for AI apps.
Notably, the company has also open-sourced this model, a move that may make it harder for rivals to justify huge upfront expenditures on hardware, software, and expertise to develop similar systems. Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella praised DeepSeek's efforts, calling the new model "super impressive" for its open-source design, efficient inference-time computing, and high compute efficiency. "We should take the developments out of China very, very seriously," he added.
Nadella's comments suggest that upstarts like DeepSeek could reshape the competitive landscape of AI. DeepSeek's announcement disrupts long-held assumptions in key ways: 1.) It undercuts the narrative that bigger budgets and access to top-tier chips are the only ways forward for AI development. 2.) By using less advanced hardware, DeepSeek opens the door for innovators who face high chip costs or export restrictions, reaffirming they can still compete. 3.) The model's success questions the growth narrative of chipmakers like Nvidia—whose soaring valuations depend on the demand for cutting-edge, high-performance hardware.
Overall, DeepSeek's model demonstrates that AI innovation is no longer a race fueled solely by how much you spend, but rather by how resourceful you can be with what you have.
Marvell Technology is down 13.6% since the beginning of the year, and at $98.20 per share, it is trading 22.1% below its 52-week high of $126.06 from January 2025. Investors who bought $1,000 worth of Marvell Technology’s shares 5 years ago would now be looking at an investment worth $4,276.
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