Microsoft's demand-first capex guide detonated a full-complex rebound — memory, semicap, optics and neocloud all ripped double digits a day after the rout, with only Meta left behind on spending fears.

CoreWeave led the entire vertical, ripping +21.5% to $73.90 — a full retrace of Wednesday's $60.82 capitulation. The neocloud snapped back after Truist upgraded it to Buy following a 42% pullback, arguing the specialized GPU-capacity chokepoint had been mispriced against demand; an $8.5 billion loan facility underwrote the case that CoreWeave is scaling infrastructure, not pitching a story. But the whole complex re-rated for one reason: after Wednesday's close Microsoft delivered the print that calmed the AI-spending fears that drove the rout. Azure grew 43% and crossed $100 billion for the fiscal year, adjusted EPS of $4.74 beat $4.24 on revenue of $90.01 billion, and — critically — capex guidance stayed demand-first even as spend hit $41 billion. Steady framing from the hyperscaler that most reassured the market sent every name that prices on the buildout sharply higher; MSFT itself closed +15.5% at $451.10.

The one laggard was the hyperscaler whose spending most feeds this vertical. Meta fell −8.0% to $539.03 after guiding full-year capex up to $135–145 billion while missing on EPS ($6.18 vs. a ~$7.14 consensus) and offering little on the return that spend will earn. The irony is structural: Meta's ballooning data-center budget is precisely the demand that lifts the memory, semicap and power suppliers below it — the market punished the buyer and rewarded the sold-to.

That transmission was visible across every chokepoint. Memory led — Micron +18.4% to $874.66, with SK hynix near its daily limit in Seoul, as Samsung warned the memory shortage will persist through 2028, handing makers pricing power. Semicap ripped on Lam Research's own blowout (Q4 EPS $1.82 vs. $1.69, revenue +30% to $6.72 billion, WFE outlook raised to ~$140 billion): LRCX +18.0%, Applied Materials +15.0%, Onto Innovation +14.8%, Entegris +9.4%, and KLA +6.0% to $180.33 on its July 30 print. Optical interconnect surged with them — Applied Optoelectronics +17.8% to $90.11, Lumentum +15.1%, Coherent +12.2%, Marvell +12.2%, Arista +8.3%, Fabrinet +6.0% — as did foundry and packaging (TSMC +7.6%, Amkor +12.9%, ASE +11.7%). Power and cooling followed the demand read: Quanta Services +17.3% on its Q2 results, GE Vernova +9.1%, Modine +8.9%, nVent +8.4%, Eaton +6.9%, with Vertiv up a modest +2.0% off its crash low.

The calendar now tests whether the reassurance holds. AMD reports August 4; Vertiv and Eaton on August 5 — the definitive read on whether data-center power orders are still accelerating; SoftBank on August 7; Applied Materials' fiscal Q3 on August 13; Lumentum August 18, Marvell August 20, Fabrinet August 24; and NVIDIA on August 26. One demand-first afternoon reversed the tape; those prints decide the trend.