Tariffs may be leaving a cloud over the stock market, but tech companies continue their upward climb, buoyed by investor excitement around artificial intelligence. On Tuesday, Meta’s share price rose 1.20% amid reports that Mark Zuckerberg’s social media giant planned to invest around $15 billion into the startup Scale AI.
Meta wasn’t the only tech company to receive a boost on Tuesday. Apple shares rose 0.61%, despite a lackluster performance at its annual developer conference, while Tesla rebounded 5.67% as the public spat between Elon Musk and President Donald Trump has become more muted. Overall, the S&P 500 rose 0.55%.
Despite markets remaining in the green, investors remain cautious as trade talks between the U.S. and China continued in London. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick told reporters on Tuesday that discussions with Chinese economic officials were going well. “We’re spending lots of time together,” he said.
AI buzz
Meta has retained its status as one of the topmost U.S. tech companies, despite high profile stumbles over the past few years. Those include its disastrous pivot to the metaverse, and its more recent scramble to keep pace in the AI arms race with competitors, including Google and OpenAI.
In its latest bid to shore up resources, Meta is building a new “superintelligence” AI research lab—a term for an AI system that would surpass the collective intelligence of humanity—that will likely be headed by the 28-year-old billionaire founder of Scale AI, Alexandr Wang. According to reports from Bloomberg and The Information, the deal to bring Wang on board would entail an investment into Scale AI totaling around $15 billion.
Though the move may not be enough for Meta to compete with other AI labs, the company’s stock still ticked up by 1.20%, bringing its monthly gain to 9.85%. Google rose by 1.29% on Tuesday.
As for Tesla, despite Tuesday’s bump, Tesla has still fallen by 5.55% over the past week. The company is planning to launch its long-anticipated self-driving taxi service in Austin by the end of the month.
Another red-hot tech stock, the stablecoin company Circle, maintained most of its massive gains from its initial public offering last week, hovering around $105, though it dropped 8.31% on the day. As Congress inches closer to passing landmark legislation that would establish regulation for stablecoins, a type of dollar-backed cryptocurrency, Circle had the largest two-day pop for an IPO that raised more than $500 million since 1980. Analysts said that Circle’s performance could encourage other fintech and crypto companies to go public, with the exchange Gemini announcing that it had confidentially filed for its IPO last week.
