Crypto World

SanDisk (SNDK) Shares Slide 5% as Google Innovation Threatens Memory Demand

Published

4 weeks ago

25 March 2026

NewsAdmin

Quick Summary

SNDK shares declined approximately 5% during Wednesday’s trading session
Google introduced TurboQuant, a new compression technology potentially reducing AI memory needs
SanDisk revealed a $1 billion private placement deal to purchase roughly 3.9% of Nanya Technology
The Nanya transaction featured a 15% price discount with a mandatory three-year holding period
Prior to Wednesday’s decline, SNDK had surged nearly 196% in 2025

Wednesday proved challenging for SanDisk as the memory chipmaker confronted two significant developments. The unveiling of Google’s TurboQuant compression technology rattled memory sector investors, while a previously unannounced $1 billion strategic stake in Nanya Technology compounded selling pressure. By session’s end, shares had retreated approximately 5%.

SNDK Stock Card
Sandisk Corporation, SNDK

TurboQuant represents Google’s latest compression innovation aimed at minimizing memory footprint requirements in artificial intelligence applications. For a chipmaker whose extraordinary rally has centered on AI-fueled memory consumption, such technological advances present a direct challenge.

The additional pressure originated from SanDisk directly. The company announced that its operating unit had committed to purchasing approximately 139 million Nanya shares via private placement, totaling $1.0 billion and representing about 3.9% of Nanya’s total shares outstanding.

The acquisition price reflected a substantial 15% markdown from market value, immediately triggering investor scrutiny regarding deal structure and motivation. Additionally, the purchased shares carry a mandatory three-year restriction on resale.

Complementing the equity position, SanDisk and Nanya formalized a comprehensive multi-year strategic procurement agreement. Through this arrangement, Nanya commits to providing DRAM components to bolster SanDisk’s extended-term supply chain requirements.

The strategic rationale appears straightforward — secure a critical supply partner while acquiring ownership at favorable pricing. However, market participants responded with skepticism rather than enthusiasm.

Understanding the Market’s Negative Response

Following SNDK’s remarkable 1,200% climb over twelve months, investor expectations for capital allocation decisions have intensified substantially. Committing $1 billion toward a non-controlling supplier stake, instead of share repurchases or internal expansion, generated considerable debate.

The transaction remains subject to Taiwanese regulatory clearance before finalization, introducing additional uncertainty into the equation. Skeptics questioned whether this represented optimal capital deployment given the stock’s extraordinary appreciation.

The announcement’s timing compounded concerns. Market observers had already begun scrutinizing SNDK’s valuation following its meteoric rise. Any development that muddied the bullish narrative was destined to trigger meaningful volatility.

Core Business Metrics Remain Robust

Notwithstanding Wednesday’s retreat, SanDisk’s fundamental performance indicators continue showing strength. Management’s Q3 FY2026 outlook projects revenue between $4.4 billion and $4.8 billion, non-GAAP earnings per share ranging from $12 to $14, and gross profit margins spanning 65% to 67%.

These figures represent substantial improvement versus Q2 results, and executive leadership maintains conviction that AI infrastructure spending will sustain its upward trajectory. Under normal circumstances, such guidance would dominate market discussion.

Options market activity for SNDK on Wednesday displayed a moderately optimistic bias, indicating certain traders perceive the pullback as an attractive entry point once Nanya-related concerns dissipate.

Technical sentiment indicators entering Wednesday’s session registered a Strong Buy rating, while the equity maintains average daily volume exceeding 18 million shares.

Presently, the investment community faces two contrasting interpretations of SanDisk: a high-momentum enterprise capitalizing on legitimate AI-driven demand, versus a company that allocated $1 billion toward a transaction generating more uncertainty than clarity.

SanDisk’s valuation currently stands at approximately $103.7 billion in total market capitalization.

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Crypto World

LayerZero Says Kelp Setup Caused Exploit, as Aave Loss Questions Mount

Published

3 minutes ago

20 April 2026

NewsAdmin

LayerZero Says Kelp Setup Caused Exploit, as Aave Loss Questions Mount

Interoperability protocol LayerZero claims that an inadequate setup tied to Kelp’s decentralized verifier network (DVN) enabled malicious actors to steal $290 million from Kelp DAO, adding that preliminary signs point to North Korea-linked threat actors.

An attacker drained about 116,500 Restaked ETH (rsETH), worth as much as $293 million at the time, from Kelp DAO’s LayerZero-powered rsETH bridge on Saturday.

LayerZero said Monday that the exploit stemmed from a single point of failure in Kelp’s setup, which relied on a single LayerZero DVN as the only verified path, despite LayerZero previously advising them against this.

“LayerZero and other external parties previously communicated best practices around DVN diversification to KelpDAO. Despite these recommendations, KelpDAO chose to utilize a 1/1 DVN configuration.”

In practice, that meant Kelp relied on a single verification path for cross-chain messages rather than requiring multiple independent checks.

The exploit quickly shifted attention from the technical cause to the question of who should absorb the losses, while the fallout spread into Aave, where the attacker used rsETH as collateral to borrow real liquidity.

Aave’s total value locked (TVL) had fallen by about $8.9 billion to $17.5 billion at the time of writing after the exploiter used the stolen funds to borrow on Aave, leaving about $195 million in “bad debt,” triggering withdrawals on the lending protocol.

LayerZero said Kelp’s rsETH bridge relied solely on the LayerZero Labs DVN, and argued that the incident reflected an unsafe application configuration rather than a compromise of LayerZero itself. The company said it is now urging all applications using 1/1 DVN setups to migrate to multi-DVN configurations and will stop signing or attesting messages for apps that retain the single verifier design.

Losses spark blame fight after $290 million Kelp exploit

With no recovery or compensation plan yet announced, users and market observers spent Monday debating whether losses should sit with Kelp DAO, LayerZero, Aave or rsETH holders themselves.

Yishi Wang, founder and CEO of open-source hardware wallet OneKey, said that the best path forward was to negotiate with the hacker, offer a 10% to 15% bounty, and get the bulk of the funds back.

“If negotiations fail, LayerZero’s ecosystem fund should foot the bulk of the bill—it’s got the deepest pockets and the most long-term skin in the game,” wrote the founder in a Monday X post, adding that Kelp DAO is “broke” and could make it up with tokens and future revenue, or consider selling the project.

Analytics platform DeFiLlama’s pseudonymous founder, 0xngmi, outlined three solutions, including the option to “socialize” losses among all users, “rug rsETH holders on L2s,” or try to return holder balances to a pre-hack snapshot, which would be “very hard to do,” he wrote in a Monday X post.

Cointelegraph reached out to Aave for comment, but had not received a response by publication.

Exploit raises Aave liquidation risks

Investor concerns about the Kelp exploit have significantly reduced Ether (ETH) liquidity on Aave, the lending protocol’s core collateral asset.

This low liquidity presents a “critical safety risk where liquidations of ETH collateral cannot take place while markets are at 100% utilization,” said MoneySupply, the pseudonymous head of strategy at Aave competitor lending protocol Spark, in a Saturday X post.

“With current illiquidity conditions on Aave, a 15-20% ETHUSD price drop could cause significant bad debt accumulation (on top of any potential issues attributable to the direct rsETH exploit),” he said.