Micron stock was among the sharpest fallers ahead of the open Tuesday after being spared the worst of the selling in the previous session. That's not a great sign.

The artificial-intelligence trade took a beating Monday and investors are waking up to a nasty hangover.

South Korea's KOSPI Index hasn't helped sentiment, plunging 11% overnight. The move has a dual function of catching up with yesterday's U.S. selloff, while also setting the tone for the action today.

Micron fell 2.3% on Monday, which wasn't a bad outcome all things considered. In comparison, memory storage company Sandisk tumbled 11%, while Advanced Micro Devices fell more than 5%.

The weakness in premarket trading Tuesday is looking more broad-based, though. Micron, Sandisk and Western Digital are all down around 4.5%. Nasdaq futures are 0.5% lower, while the Nasdaq Composite only slipped 0.2% despite the chaos.

China is playing a big role. Stocks turned sharply lower following reports that a Chinese company is producing immersion deep ultraviolet lithography machines, key for chipmaking -- the sort of machines currently made by Dutch company ASML.

Earlier in the day, Chinese memory chip maker CXMT surged 466% after its IPO in Shanghai -- becoming mainland China's most valuable company with a market cap of $484 billion.

But even CXMT, the hottest new AI stock, is cooling off as it closed 4% on its second day of trading.

Those hoping for a rebound this morning are faced with another bad headache instead.