Tech Weekly: Markets Hit All-Time Highs as Strait of Hormuz Reopens

This week's tech sector performance

After a mixed close last week, global stocks were muted on Monday (April 13) as Washington moved toward a blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, repricing energy shock risks. The Nasdaq Composite (INDEXNASDAQ:.IXIC) held above recent drawdowns, and the market saw gains in afternoon trading after news of progress on a deal.

Technology was the largest gainer on the S&P 500 (INDEXSP:.INX), which closed near its all-time high.

Signs of trader optimism were on display on Tuesday (April 14) after earnings from major banks, including JPMorgan Chase (NYSE:JPM), provided evidence of resilient consumer balance sheets and strong fee income.

Reports of scheduled peace talks between Israel and Lebanon boosted investor sentiment further, despite the International Monetary Fund cutting its outlook for global growth earlier in the day. Its report cites war-driven energy ⁠price spikes, and warns that an extended conflict could push the world to the brink of a recession.

Markets continued their rally on Wednesday (April 15) and Thursday (April 16), ultimately recovering to pre-war levels. The S&P 500 hit 7,000 for the first time, and the Nasdaq Composite hit fresh record highs above 24,000 when a 10 day ceasefire agreement between Israel and Lebanon was reached on Thursday afternoon.

Upbeat earnings from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) (NYSE:TSM) gave artificial intelligence (AI) stocks a boost, particularly semiconductor equipment suppliers, on forward-looking guidance underscoring that AI‑driven CAPEX is still anchored in real, robust demand rather than pure hype.

Oil prices fell below US$80 per barrel and stock markets soared around the world on Friday (April 17) after Iran said it would reopen the Strait of Hormuz “for the remaining period of the ceasefire."

The Nasdaq rose 1.52 percent to close at an all-time high of 24,468.48.

3 tech stocks moving markets this week

This week's top movers, according to TradingView data, were:

1. Strategy (NASDAQ:MSTR)

As Bitcoin broke above weeks-long resistance levels, Strategy saw a 28.04 percent share price rise.

2. AppLovin (NASDAQ:APP)

AppLovin finished the week up 26.91 percent.

3. DoorDash (NASDAQ:DASH)

DoorDash ended the week 18.98 percent higher.

Top tech news of the week

• Ad research firm eMarketer said Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:META) is poised to hit over US$243.5 billion in net ad revenue this year, overtaking Google's (NASDAQ:GOOGL) US$239.5 billion.

• Bloom Energy (NYSE:BE) shares jumped 15 percent after the company said Oracle (NYSE:ORCL) will purchase 2.8 gigawatts of fuel cell power from Bloom to supply its data centers.

• Allbirds (NASDAQ:BIRD) revealed a surprising pivot, announcing the sale of its sneaker business and a plan to relaunch as an AI-compute infrastructure shop. On Wednesday, Allbirds said it will transform into NewBird AI, a move supported by a US$50 million convertible financing with an institutional investor. The new venture will focus on AI-compute infrastructure and GPU-as-a-Service, specializing in the acquisition of high-performance chips to be leased to developers and AI startups. The news sent Allbirds’ share price surging over 600 percent in a single day. It closed the week over 351 percent higher.

• Orbital, a company that builds and operates GPU data centers in low-Earth orbit, said its first test mission is scheduled to launch on a SpaceX Falcon 9 in April 2027. According to the firm, which is backed by a16z Speedrun, space-based data centers can leverage 24/7 solar power and radiative cooling to overcome the energy ceiling and cooling constraints of terrestrial AI infrastructure. Each satellite will house a cluster of NVIDIA (NASDAQ:NVDA) servers with Space-1 Vera Rubin GPUs.

• Shares of Novo Nordisk (NYSE:NVO) saw a modest boost on Tuesday after the company announced a partnership with OpenAI to improve drug discovery. Separately, OpenAI introduced a new life science‑oriented model called GPT‑Rosalind. It is tailored for biology, drug‑discovery tasks and translational medicine research. The Thursday release triggered a drop in drug-discovery companies.

• Amazon Web Services introduced an AI program called Amazon Bio Discovery, saying it will help scientists design and test drugs more quickly by providing an AI model library that generates and evaluates potential drug molecules for new antibody therapies.

• Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) announced plans to buy Globalstar (NASDAQ:GSAT) for around US$11.6 billion, saying it will use the purchase to expand its Amazon Leo low-Earth-orbit satellite network. The company has plans to deploy a next-generation system beginning in 2028, which will provide service to the Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) iPhone and Apple Watch devices.

• Quantum stocks experienced a massive rally fueled by NVIDIA's family of open-source AI models. Designed to accelerate the adoption of quantum computing, they were unveiled on Tuesday.

• Meta and Broadcom (NASDAQ:AVGO) are deepening their existing partnership, announcing collaborative efforts to develop the social media company’s application‑specific AI chips.

• Quantitative trading firm Jane Street signed a US$6 billion, multi‑year AI cloud deal with CoreWeave (NASDAQ:CRWV) to use its AI cloud platform. It will gain access to high‑performance compute (including NVIDIA Vera Rubin‑class GPUs) across multiple data center locations, plus dedicated connectivity and custom storage tailored for its research and trading workloads. The firm also bought US$1 billion worth of CoreWeave Class A common stock, making it one of CoreWeave’s largest shareholders.

• Shares of Snap (NYSE:SNAP) surged on Wednesday after the company said it will cut 16 percent of its workforce. “The headcount reduction is designed to further streamline our operations and reallocate resources toward our highest-priority initiatives, leveraging increased operational efficiencies to accelerate our path toward net-income profitability,” Snap said in a filing.

• Auctor, a software tool that uses AI to help consultants and IT firms set up business software, raised US$20 million in a Series A funding round led by Sequoia Capital, with participation from strategic partners, including M12, Microsoft's (NASDAQ:MSFT) venture capital fund, along with Y Combinator, HubSpot Ventures, Workday Ventures and OneStream.

• TSMC reported strong first quarter revenue of US$36 billion, 35 percent higher than last year, and raised its full-year growth forecast to above 30 percent, pointing to “extremely robust” AI-related demand. CEO C.C. Wei said the assessment was based on comments from TSMC’s customers and cloud firms.

• Meta raised the price of its Quest virtual reality headsets, citing the rising cost of memory.

Tech ETF performance

Tech exchange-traded funds (ETFs) track baskets of major tech stocks, meaning their performance helps investors gauge the overall performance of the niches they cover.

This week, the iShares Semiconductor ETF (NASDAQ:SOXX) increased by 7.83 percent, while the Invesco PHLX Semiconductor ETF (NASDAQ:SOXQ) gained 7.91 percent.

The VanEck Semiconductor ETF (NASDAQ:SMH) increased by 6.67 percent.

Tech news to watch next week

Macro‑sensitive data and a fresh batch of tech‑heavy earnings will keep investors alert next week

Q2 earnings season is set to kick off, with reports due from large‑cap tech and AI infrastructure names, including Intel (NASDAQ:INTC), IBM (NYSE:IBM), Amazon and Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA). These will give investors a critical read on whether AI‑driven margins and the CAPEX cycle can offset any cooling in consumer‑tech demand.