Here's something that doesn't happen every day: a company you might not have heard of breaks, and suddenly half the internet stops working. That's exactly what happened Tuesday morning when Cloudflare Inc. (NET), one of the world's largest internet infrastructure companies, suffered a major system failure that rippled across global web services.
The outage started around 6:40 a.m. EST and lasted until 9:42 a.m., which in internet time feels like an eternity. During those three hours, services used by millions went dark: X, OpenAI's ChatGPT, Anthropic's Claude, Meta Platforms Inc. (META)'s Facebook, Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN)'s AWS, Canva, and a long list of others, according to Onedetector.
If you're wondering why one company's technical glitch could cause this much chaos, it's because Cloudflare is essentially part of the internet's invisible plumbing. As one of the world's largest content delivery networks, it acts as an unseen backbone that keeps huge portions of the web running quickly and securely.
The Market Didn't Take It Well
When infrastructure at this scale fails, the impact is immediate and obvious. Countless companies rely on Cloudflare for security filtering, traffic routing, and keeping their services online in the first place. So when it goes down, everything downstream gets hit.
Cloudflare shares dropped nearly 5% at the open before recovering somewhat as services came back online. But the pain spread far beyond one stock.
The tech-heavy Nasdaq 100, tracked by the Invesco QQQ Trust (QQQ), was down 1.2% minutes after the opening bell, extending Monday's 0.9% decline. AI-linked stocks got hit particularly hard. The Global X Artificial Intelligence & Technology ETF (AIQ) fell 1.6%, while the iShares Semiconductor ETF (SOXX) dropped 2.2%.
The Tech Stock Damage Report
By 9:48 a.m. EST, market data showed several large-cap tech names trading sharply lower. Here's who took the biggest hits among companies with market caps above $10 billion:
| Name | Change % |
|---|---|
| SanDisk Corp (SNDK) | -7.11% |
| Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) | -3.55% |
| Western Digital Corp (WDC) | -3.32% |
| Nebius Group Ltd. (NBY) | -3.01% |
| Micron Technology Inc. (MU) | -2.66% |
| Fabrinet (FN) | -2.59% |
| CoreWeave Inc (CRWV) | -2.59% |
| Figma Inc. (FIGM) | -2.55% |
| ARM Holdings plc (ARM) | -2.50% |
| Marvell Technology Inc (MRVL) | -2.44% |
| Entegris Inc (ENTG) | -2.30% |
| Credo Technology Group Holding Ltd (CRDO) | -2.12% |
| Nvidia Corp. (NVDA) | -2.10% |
| Unity Software Inc. (U) | -2.04% |
What It All Means
The selloff wasn't necessarily about Cloudflare's specific technical problem. Markets were already jittery after Monday's losses. But the outage served as a stark reminder of something uncomfortable: the modern digital economy runs on remarkably fragile infrastructure.
"Today's Cloudflare outage shows how vulnerable the digital economy has become," said Fadl Mantash, chief information security officer at Tribe Payments, in an emailed comment to MarketDash.
When a major upstream provider goes down, the impact "cascades across industries, touching everything from social media platforms to e-commerce checkouts and backend payment services," he explained.
The concentration risk is real. A handful of companies control critical internet infrastructure, and when one stumbles, everyone feels it. For investors, that's worth remembering the next time someone tells you tech stocks are safe because "everyone needs the internet." Yes, everyone needs it. But they all need the same few companies to keep it running.