Western Digital’s sharp stock decline and intense intraday volatility are primarily driven by a broad, sector-wide selloff in semiconductor and digital storage names. Although the hardware maker has benefited immensely from the artificial intelligence infrastructure boom, it became caught in a wider tech rout after Samsung Electronics released its preliminary earnings update.

Even though Samsung reported a massive nineteen-fold surge in operating profit, investors seized on the strong report as an opportunity to lock in gains, triggering a classic “sell-the-news” reaction across the global tech hardware sector. This profit-taking quickly spread to major U.S. memory and storage companies. High-flying peers like Micron Technology and…