Cryptocurrencies’ sharp gains from Monday’s lows were paused in early U.S. trading on Wednesday as technology stocks quickly fell amid disappointing reports on artificial intelligence.
Microsoft is reducing sales quotas for artificial intelligence software, The Information reports. The story goes on to say that the software giant has lowered expectations for its next wave of artificial intelligence products, Agents, after customer adoption was slower than expected this year.
As a result, sales quotas for some artificial intelligence tools, including Microsoft’s Azure cloud unit, were reduced across multiple divisions after failing to meet 2025 growth targets. This comes after artificial intelligence giant OpenAI also lowered its projected revenue from artificial intelligence agents over the next five years earlier this year.
The market reacted quickly, with Microsoft (MSFT) falling nearly 3% on the news, and the Nasdaq 100 index changing from a rise of about 0.5% to a fall of 0.5%.
Cryptocurrency prices, which have been closely tied to declines in tech stocks over the past few weeks, also fell. BTC, which was trading above $93,000 overnight, immediately fell to $91,800. Recently, it changed hands for about $92,300, still up 3.3% from the past 24 hours. Ethereum’s Ethereum It is down 1.8% from its intraday high and is holding above $3,000.
Bitcoin mining stocks were lackluster in pre-market trading. Iren (IREN) is down about 2%, while Cipher Mining (CIFR) and Core Scientific (CORZ) are both down about 1%. TeraWulf (WULF) is steady.
Among other cryptocurrency-related stocks, MicroStrategy (MSTR) rose about 2% and Coinbase (COIN) gained 1%. New entrants Circle (CRCL) and eToro (ETOR) gained 2% and 3% respectively.
