Tech Weekly: Yields and AI Deals Spur Volatile Week in Tech

This week's tech sector performance

Global markets climbed on the back of a tech-led rally on Monday (September 21) as oil prices eased after Qatar and US President Donald Trump signaled that talks to end the US-Iran war could resume.

The news boosted risk sentiment after North American markets’ mixed finish last week.

The Nasdaq Composite (INDEXNASDAQ:.IXIC) reached its first record close high since June 2, propelled by gains in Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:META) after its new artificial intelligence (AI) agent, Muse, took the top spot on Apple's (NASDAQ:AAPL) App Store. Market sentiment gained additional momentum ahead of Meta Connect, the firm's two day AI and wearables conference, helping drive the company’s biggest single-day gain since April 2024.

The app’s popularity prompted Wells Fargo (NYSE:WFC) analyst Ken Gawrelski to raise his price target for Meta from US$640 to US$796, while maintaining an overweight rating. The rally lifted other AI-linked stocks, with Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) (NASDAQ:AMD) topping a US$1 trillion market cap.

Resurgent AI optimism carried into trading on Tuesday (September 22), with traders sending the Nasdaq Composite to a second record; however, sentiment reversed on Wednesday (September 23) after bond yields jumped on strong economic data, higher oil prices and growing bets on another US Federal Reserve interest rate hike.

Yields kept rising on Thursday (September 24), with the 10 year treasury yield hitting levels not seen since 2007. Meanwhile, the 30 year treasury reached its highest level since 2004.

Also on Thursday (September 24), Bloomberg reported that Oracle (NYSE:ORCL) had sent Blue Owl Capital (NYSE:OWL) a force majeure notice on its planned New Mexico data center, Project Jupiter, which Blue Owl's Stack Infrastructure unit is developing. It is part of Stargate, an AI project led by OpenAI and SoftBank Group (TSE:9984,OTCPL:SFBQF).

Oracle cited delays in getting power to the site, but said the project remains on the company’s planned schedule. Blue Owl said the notice doesn't change anyone's financial commitments. Shares of both Oracle and Blue Owl fell.

In an email, Nigel Green, CEO of deVere Group, said a synchronized global bond selloff is rapidly driving up borrowing costs as central banks tighten policy in response to rising inflation and surging oil prices.

Green highlighted that surging government debt and heavy corporate bond issuance, much of which is funding the ongoing AI buildout, are flooding debt markets, pushing yields to multi-year highs and putting downward pressure on tech futures and broader asset valuations.

Stocks recovered from midday lows after Reuters reported that US and Iranian negotiators were working on a phased deal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. Gains in big tech names, led by Meta after it laid out plans to generate revenue from Muse, left the Nasdaq Composite essentially flat at the close.

Futures were higher on Friday (September 25) on Iran’s reported offer to reopen the Strait of Hormuz within seven days and restart nuclear talks if the US meets a list of conditions, including lifting its naval blockade and releasing frozen Iranian assets. A secondary boost came after US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said China and the US had reached agreements on farm products, medical devices and Chinese consumer goods.

Equities posted early gains, but momentum was dampened by a University of Michigan survey revealing that US consumers expect inflation to reach 4.6 percent over the next year, up from a 4 percent projection the prior month.

Following the report, the yield on the 10 year treasury rose further. The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite stabilized, closing a volatile, yield-driven week at 27,068.72, up 0.48 percent on the day.

The index posted a weekly gain of 1.29 percent.

3 tech stocks moving markets this week

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

1. Astera Labs (NASDAQ:ALAB)

Astera Labs led with a gain of 21.53 percent.

2. Strategy (NASDAQ:MSTR)

Strategy followed with a weekly gain of 16.13 percent this week.

3. Cadence Design Systems (NASDAQ:CDNS)

Cadence Design Systems saw a gain of 15.68 percent.

Top tech news of the week

Meta, Amazon and AI shopping agents

During a Wednesday keynote taking place at Meta Connect, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the company plans to generate revenue from Muse by collecting a small transaction fee. Partners named include Walmart (NYSE:WMT), Best Buy (NYSE:BBY) and Shopify (TSX:SHOP,NASDAQ:SHOP).

On hardware, Meta unveiled lightweight VR glasses, shipping spring 2027; camera-free Ray-Ban Meta Audio glasses, shipping in October; and Muse Charm, a pocket-sized AI gadget coming later this year.

Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) has reportedly blocked Meta's Muse AI agent from browsing and buying on its site, a move that came to light on Monday. Separately, Amazon said it would give its sellers a free year of its Quick Plus AI assistant and has launched a seller assistant plugin for it.

New models and products

OpenAI released GPT-6 Sol and GPT-6 Luna on Wednesday, with developer pricing at half the cost of the models they replace. For its part, Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) unveiled a new desktop Copilot app on Friday, combining chat, coding and Autopilot agents, to be rolled out over the coming weeks. Separately, the Information reported that Microsoft is offering steep Copilot discounts to large corporate customers.

Google (NASDAQ:GOOGL) DeepMind's Koray Kavukcuoglu said Gemini 4 is in post-training, the refining stage after a model is first built, and Google hopes to release it well before year-end.

Qualcomm (NASDAQ:QCOM) said it has renewed its patent licence with Apple, taking effect when the current deal expires in March 2027. The length of the new deal wasn't disclosed.

AI for cybersecurity

Palo Alto Networks (NASDAQ:PANW) launched a subscription service that uses frontier models, including Anthropic's Claude Mythos 5 and OpenAI's GPT-5.6-Cyber, to find and fix security flaws.

Bell Canada (TSX:BCE) and Cohere launched an AI model to help Bell Cyber’s security analysts sort through alerts and investigate threats faster, with all data kept on Canada-hosted infrastructure.

AI Infrastructure

Anthropic signed a seven year computing deal with Akamai Technologies (NGS:AKAM) and received warrants to buy up to about 5 percent of the company over time. Akamai shares jumped Friday. Anthropic is also in early talks to lease up to a gigawatt of capacity from Apollo-owned Stream Data Centers, according to the Information.

SoftBank sold about US$11 billion of bonds in US dollars and euros. LSEG data says it's the largest high-yield bond deal on record. A Brookings paper by Stijn Van Nieuwerburgh, a finance professor at Columbia University, says the AI buildout is increasingly being funded through outside lenders and deals that stay off company balance sheets.

China

After weekend talks with Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng, US Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent said the US had proposed a notification mechanism so the two countries can alert each other to AI incidents that threaten national security. Trump hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping at a state dinner attended by top tech and defense CEOs. Xi said both countries have a responsibility to ensure AI “is always under human control.”

Alibaba (NYSE:BABA) unveiled its Zhenwu V900, which it calls China's most powerful AI chip. The company says Alibaba Cloud's data centre capacity will pass 20GW by 2032.

The Information reported that DeepSeek plans to lean more on Huawei chips for training as early as Q4.

AI safety and oversight

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said on Thursday that an OpenAI agent accessed public and non-public files on a Services Australia health statistics portal.

According to research group Transluce, OpenAI’s agents have been probing other websites since at least March. Speaking to TechCrunch, OpenAI said it is reviewing the activity and has been in contact with the Australian government.

Bank of England Deputy Governor Sarah Breeden said on Monday in a Wharton School podcast interview that the central bank is looking at testing kill switches to prevent AI from disrupting financial markets.

She stressed officials don’t know yet how one could operate.

More than 20 countries, including Canada, but excluding the US, signed a call on Monday for control of frontier AI models. On Wednesday, Sam Altman and Dario Amodei urged cooperation on AI safety at a UN Security Council session on AI. Anthropic, Google and OpenAI are reportedly planning their own AI safety standards body.

The NSA reportedly told lawmakers it is spending billions this year to test AI models.

Canada

Canada's Department of National Defence has put seed funding into the MAIple Stack, a sovereign military AI platform built with five domestic partners, including Cohere.

It is aimed at Department of National Defencs's goal of being AI-enabled by 2030.

Separately, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney and French President Emmanuel Macron directed their space agencies and defense ministries to jointly develop and share space infrastructure.

France's Aldoria has already contracted with Canada's government to supply space surveillance data to the military's 3 Canadian Space Division, building on a June 2026 classified data sharing pact.

Toronto-Dominion Bank (TSX:TD,NYSE:TD) announced a three-year AI collaboration with Cohere to boost AI development and adoption. Meanwhile, NVIDIA (NASDAQ:NVDA), AMD, Intel (NASDAQ:INTC), IBM (NYSE:IBM) and Lenovo were among 19 new signatories to Canada's Responsible Data Center Development Principles.

BlackBerry (TSX:BB,NYSE:BB) won a deal to supply its Alloy Kore vehicle software to Coretura, the Volvo Group and Daimler Truck joint venture. The company says it adds over US$100 million to its QNX royalty backlog.

Shares of Xanadu Quantum Technologies (TSE:XNDU,NASDAQ:XNDU) fell sharply when its first post-SPAC share lockup expired on Tuesday. CEO Christian Weedbrook sold about a tenth of his holdings.

Evan Solomon, Canadian minister of AI and digital innovation, announced that Ottawa is funding up to 10,000 AI work placements for students, recent graduates and postdoctoral researchers through Mitacs, a national nonprofit that places young researchers in businesses. Solomon said the program, which will be co-funded by businesses, has two streams: ADOPT places young Canadians in businesses that are testing and adopting AI tools, while AI+X places them in projects applying AI to other fields, such as agriculture and healthcare.

The program is part of a wider goal to create up to 90,000 AI-related jobs and work placements by 2031.

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) finished the week 5.04 percent higher, while the Invesco PHLX Semiconductor ETF (NASDAQ:SOXQ) gained 4.18 percent.

The VanEck Semiconductor ETF (NASDAQ:SMH) gained 4.22 percent.

Tech news to watch next week

With bond yields at their highest level in nearly two decades, investors will be watching next week's US economic data for signs of whether the Fed will keep raising rates. Investors will also be looking for more details on the US-China trade agreements, which Jamieson Greer said would come on September 28.

The Conference Board's consumer confidence index and the August job openings survey are due on September 29. The same day, Trump, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson and tech CEOs are expected to meet on AI regulation.

The ADP private payrolls report comes out on September 30, followed by August figures for consumer spending and income, the core personal consumption expenditures price index and updated figures for Q2 GDP.

Memory chipmaker Micron Technology (NASDAQ:MU) will also be reporting its quarterly results.

Next week will end with the September jobs report on October 2.

In Canada, domestic bond and money markets will be closed on September 30 for the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, while stock markets will stay open.