Al Root

Santa delivered some coal early for investors in power generation and technology company GE Vernova.

GE Vernova stock was off 7.8% in midday Wednesday trading, the worst-performing stock in the S&P 500. The S&P 500 and Dow Jones Industrial Average were down 0.8% and 0.2%, respectively. It was

AI jitters look like the reason for the steep decline. A chip start-up named Mystic has created worries similar to the DeepSeek situation encountered earlier this year. That is apparently all it took to catalyze the selloff.

The company raised $125 million in a new round of funding. While that is a tiny amount of money relative to the sums being spent on AI, Mythic is trying to design AI chips that use less power.

Rising demand for electricity, thanks to the buildout of power-hungry AI data centers, is the biggest reason for increased optimism in GE Vernova stock.

AI has been great for GE Vernova stock, which has more than doubled this year. However, shares are vulnerable to any AI tantrums the market might have.

The Mystic situation is a little like the DeepSeek problem Nvidia and the AI sector faced in January. At that time, a Chinese AI model was apparently producing good results with cheaper chips that use less power.

DeepSeek sparked conversations about the Jevons paradox: Cheaper tech leads to more demand, which leads to more spending on the tech. That helped soothe investors' fears and got the market over the DeepSeek threat.

History appears to be repeating itself on Wednesday. Utilities Constellation Energy and Vistra were down 7.8% and 7%, respectively. Electrical infrastructure provider Quanta Services was down 4.6%. Oracle and Nvidia shares were off 4.9% and 3.1%, respectively.

Beyond the broader AI concerns, there isn't much to pin GE Vernova's decline on. There are no downgrades or price target cuts from Wall Street. In fact, Wall Street is more bullish on shares than it was only a week ago.

Today, 68% of analysts covering the stock rate shares Buy, according to Bloomberg. The average analyst price target for GE Vernova stock is about $739. About a week ago, before the company's analyst event in New York City, 64% of analysts rated shares Buy. The average analyst price target was $681.

How GE Vernova stock will keep reacting to Mythic is hard to say. Cheap, efficient technology is never really a bad thing.

Write to Al Root at allen.root@dowjones.com

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December 17, 2025 14:04 ET (19:04 GMT)

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