The answer is **Circular Financing**. This is the shadow hanging over the sector. Nvidia invests cash into startups like CoreWeave or OpenAI, who then immediately use that cash to buy Nvidia chips. Nvidia books this as revenue. It works perfectly until the "Investor" stops funding the "Customer." When that happens, the revenue cycle risks snapping instantly. But while the hardware giants stumbled on this "bad news," something strange happened elsewhere. Palantir released Q4 2025 numbers that defied standard financial gravity, surging 9% while the rest of the sector bled.