Tech-Led Rebound Lifts US Stocks After AI Sell-Off

US equity indexes rose on Friday, recovering part of Thursday’s steep technology-led sell-off. The S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite were both up around 1.4% by midday, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average climbed about 2% and touched a fresh record high near 49,938 points, according to market commentary.

Semiconductors and other cyclical names helped offset lingering weakness in communication services and parts of the software sector. Sector snapshots showed technology, health care, consumer, and energy indexes all trading higher in afternoon action, reversing some of the prior session’s losses.

Exchange‑traded funds tracking broad US equities and technology also moved up, with MT Newswires reporting gains in funds such as the Technology Select Sector SPDR ETF as investors rotated back into growth stocks.

Chipmakers were among the strongest performers after Amazon outlined plans to spend about $200 billion on capital expenditures in 2026, predominantly to expand Amazon Web Services capacity for core and AI workloads. The company reported a cloud backlog of $244 billion, up 40% year over year and 22% sequentially, driven by AI demand.

Nvidia shares jumped as much as 7.8%, adding more than $300 billion in market value and snapping a five‑day losing streak. Investors focused on Nvidia’s entrenched role supplying GPUs to hyperscalers, including AWS, which is still using six‑year‑old Nvidia A100 chips and has expanded its partnership to include newer Blackwell GPUs and networking products.

Intel climbed more than 5% as investors digested both the hyperscale capex outlook and reports that Intel and Advanced Micro Devices have raised server CPU prices by up to 10% in China amid extended lead times. Analysts highlighted that traditional CPUs are regaining importance as head nodes in AI servers and for running smaller models.

Broadcom also rallied, supported by analyst commentary that positioned it as a key beneficiary of AI networking and custom ASIC demand. Research cited expectations that Broadcom’s AI revenue could roughly quadruple by fiscal 2027, helped by work with customers such as Alphabet, Meta Platforms and OpenAI.

The rebound followed several days of heavy selling in software and data‑focused names, triggered in part by new AI tools from Anthropic and heightened concerns about disruption to legacy business models. A software ETF tracking the group was reported down about 12% for the week, its worst performance since 2008.

Commentary from institutional investors framed the weakness as a sharp but possibly temporary reset in AI‑linked expectations rather than a definitive end to the investment cycle. Analysts noted that large tech companies financing current AI capex generally have strong cash flows, even as markets reassess how quickly that spending will translate into earnings.

Bank of America, reviewing Alphabet’s latest results, reiterated a Buy rating and modestly raised revenue and earnings forecasts while trimming its valuation multiple to reflect broader multiple compression across big tech. The bank cited accelerating Search and Cloud trends and described Alphabet as a durable AI beneficiary despite near‑term concern over heavy capex guidance.

Bitcoin rebounded to around $69,000–$71,000 after falling as much as 14% on Thursday, its steepest one‑day drop on record according to one account. The prior day’s slide had erased roughly $200 billion in Bitcoin’s market value and contributed to stress across crypto‑linked equities.

Shares of Strategy, the Bitcoin treasury company formerly known as MicroStrategy, and Bitmine Immersion Technologies, which holds a large Ethereum position, both rallied on Friday after steep earlier losses. A separate report noted that Strategy stock was still down about 71% from all‑time highs and Bitmine’s Ethereum holdings were sitting on substantial unrealized losses after a 36% monthly decline in Ether’s price.

Crypto exchange Coinbase also advanced, consistent with commentary that its trading‑volume‑driven revenues tend to benefit from market volatility. Another update described a localized flash crash on South Korea’s Bithumb, where an internal error related to a rewards event briefly credited users with large amounts of Bitcoin and drove the price on that venue far below global levels before being corrected.

Stellantis shares fell sharply in US trading, down about 24.5%, after the company disclosed €22.2 billion ($26.5 billion) in charges, mostly tied to downsizing its electric‑vehicle product and supply‑chain plans and increasing warranty provisions. The automaker also guided to an adjusted operating loss of €1.2 billion to €1.5 billion for the second half of 2025 and suspended its dividend.

Separately, Stellantis agreed to sell its 49% stake in Canada’s NextStar Energy battery joint venture to LG Energy Solution, which will take full control of what is described as Canada’s first large‑scale EV battery factory. Stellantis will remain a major customer for the Windsor, Ontario, facility, where more than C$5 billion has been invested and employment is targeted to rise to 2,500 as production scales.

LG Energy Solution said full ownership will allow NextStar to respond more quickly to demand, including from the energy storage sector, while Stellantis framed the new structure as providing long‑term certainty for investment in its Canadian operations and supporting North American battery supply‑chain goals.