Corning's stock plummeted 5.97% during intraday trading on Thursday. The sharp decline was part of a broader downturn affecting technology and hardware stocks tied to artificial intelligence infrastructure.

The selloff was primarily triggered by reports that Meta Platforms plans to sell its surplus artificial intelligence computing capacity to external clients. This news sparked investor concerns that demand for AI computing infrastructure may have peaked, leading to a broad selloff across the AI hardware supply chain. As a leading supplier in the optical communications sector, Corning faced significant selling pressure as part of this sector-wide downturn.

Additional factors contributing to the decline included profit-taking activity following Corning's previous strong performance and institutional portfolio rebalancing at the half-year mark, which amplified the downward movement.