AI-related stocks rallied sharply on Friday as investors piled back into artificial intelligence and technology names amid hopes for progress in US-Iran negotiations and renewed momentum across Wall Street.
The broader market pushed higher, with the S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite reaching fresh all-time intraday highs as traders reacted to signs that diplomatic efforts between the United States and Iran could still prevent a broader escalation in the Middle East conflict.
The S&P 500 rose 0.6%, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite gained 1.1%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average hovered near flat levels.
President Donald Trump said Monday that talks with Iran were “proceeding nicely,” although he also warned the United States could move offensively if negotiations collapse.
At the same time, the US military confirmed it carried out what it described as “self defense” strikes in southern Iran targeting missile launch sites and Iranian naval units attempting to place mines.
Among chipmakers, Qualcomm surged roughly 6% after expanding its partnership with Stellantis around Snapdragon Digital Chassis systems for next-generation vehicles.
Advanced Micro Devices climbed nearly 5% after chief executive Lisa Su said the company is working with Taiwanese partners to expand production capacity amid rising AI-related demand.
Meanwhile, Nvidia continued reinforcing its longer-term AI ambitions beyond graphics processors.
Chief executive Jensen Huang said over the weekend that Nvidia sees a future $200 billion CPU opportunity, including China, as AI workloads increasingly shift toward inference and agentic AI systems.
During Nvidia’s recent earnings call, Huang said the company’s new “Vera” CPU architecture opens access to a massive new addressable market beyond GPUs.
The rise of agentic AI — systems capable of autonomous reasoning and task execution — is broadening demand across the semiconductor ecosystem and increasing the importance of CPUs alongside traditional AI accelerators.
Nvidia is increasingly positioning itself not only as the dominant GPU provider, but as a full-stack AI infrastructure company spanning processors, networking, software and complete computing platforms.
The company remains at the center of Wall Street’s AI spending narrative as hyperscalers, governments and enterprises continue dramatically increasing infrastructure investments tied to artificial intelligence.
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