Tech Weekly: Iran War Sinks Indexes for Second Week

This week's tech sector performance

This week, oil shocks from the Iran-US-Israel conflict and mixed economic data resulted in a wild ride for equities.

Monday (March 9) saw a sharp afternoon rebound from early losses, with the Nasdaq Composite (INDEXNASDAQ:.IXIC) closing up 1.4 percent after US President Donald Trump’s short-war comments eased stagflation fears, despite oil topping US$100/bbl.

Tuesday’s (March 10) mixed finish followed intense airstrikes and Gulf blockade threats, capping a steep oil selloff. Most major indices finished in the red, but the Nasdaq managed to make a small gain of 0.01 percent.

US market futures edge higher on Wednesday (March 11) ahead of the US consumer inflation report, which came in as expected at 2.4 percent. Oil rebounded after the International Energy Agency announced its recommendation to release 400 million barrels of oil to restrain soaring crude prices, the largest in its history. Markets closed mixed.

Thursday’s (March 12) escalation pushed crude to 4-year highs, slamming the index down 404 points and amplifying inflation jitters and private credit worries flagged by Wall Street strategist Ed Yardeni. Markets closed sharply lower, with the Nasdaq logging a loss of 1.8 percent.

PCE inflation meeting expectations and steady GDP data eased some stagflation fears and led to a mild recovery on Friday (March 14). Tech held firm with Nasdaq flat. The index shed 1.26 percent in a week dominated by geopolitical oil shocks.

3 tech stocks moving markets this week

Memory storage providers outperformed the week’s oil rout after CNBC’s Mad Money host Jim Cramer urged dip buying amid a broad sell-off.

1. Micron Technology (NASDAQ:MU)

Micron Technology was the top performer on the Nasdaq-100 (INDEXNASDAQ:NDX), finishing the week up by 12.10 percent.

2. Western Digital (NASDAQ:WDC)

Western Digital advanced by 8.92 percent.

3. Seagate Technology (NASDAQ:STX)

Seagate Technology, a company that designs, manufactures, and sells data storage products, closed up 7.69 percent.

Top tech news of the week

• Constellation Software (TSX:CSU,OTCPL:CNSWF) reported its Q4 2025 earnings on Monday. The company's revenue hit US$3.18 billion, up 18 percent year-on-year for Q4 and US$11.62 billion for the year. However, its net income fell to US$110 million, down from US$285 million last year.

• Hewlett Packard Enterprise (NYSE:HPE) released its Q1 results. Revenue reached US$9.3 billion, up 18 percent year-on-year. Q2 guidance of US$9.6 to US$10 billion beat estimates of US$9.57 billion.

• During the Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) Frontier Transformation digital event on Monday, the company announced “Wave 3” of Microsoft 365 Copilot, focusing on agentic capabilities that allow AI to perform long-running, multi-step tasks.

• Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) is reportedly postponing its smart home display until later this year due to delays in finishing AI upgrades to its Siri digital assistant.

• Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:META) acquired Moltbook, a social network designed for AI agents, for an undisclosed purchase price. The deal is expected to close mid-March, Meta told Axios, with the Moltbook creators Matt Schlicht and Ben Parr starting at Meta Superintelligence Labs on March 16.

• Oracle (NYSE:ORCL) exceeded Wall Street’s Q3 estimates of US$16.91 billion, reporting US$17.19 billion. Strong demand for its cloud computing services, fueled by the AI boom, drove this performance against larger rivals. Future contracted revenue, indicated by remaining performance obligations, reached US$55 billion, surpassing the US$540.37 billion estimate.

• Deutsche Bank (NYSE:DB) upgraded its rating for the US and European tech sector, turning "overweight" on software. “Current valuations imply that consensus believes that software companies will no longer outgrow the broader index. Facts are telling a different story,” Deutsche Bank said. Analysts Maximilian Uleer, Carolin Raab and Francesca Mazzali said software equities had underperformed over the past six months, adding that the current narrative has overemphasized risks while overlooking potential benefits.

• Canadian space tech firm MDA Space launched a US$300 million public share offering in the US on Thursday, with shares listing on NYSE under the symbol MDA. A total of US$300 million of shares were offered and traded in a US$30.44 - US$32.13 range, closing at US$31.00.

• Advanced Machine Intelligence Labs, an AI startup led by former Meta Platforms chief AI scientist Yann LeCun, raised US$1.03 billion at a US$3.5 billion pre-money valuation in a round led by NVIDIA (NASDAQ:NVDA), Greycroft, former Google (NASDAQ:GOOGL) CEO Eric Schmidt and Jeff Bezos. The company plans to develop “world models” trained on video and spatial data to achieve human-level reasoning.

• Salesforce (NYSE:CRM) sold US$25 billion in senior notes to fund an immediate, accelerated share repurchase program, marking the largest debt issuance in the company’s history. The sale was part of the company's broader US$50 billion buyback plan announced in February. Salesforce shares rose 3.5 percent, but credit agencies issued a downgrade warning.

• Microsoft is reportedly in advanced talks to lease AI data center capacity in Texas after Oracle recently withdrew from the deal, according to reports from the Information.

• Meta introduced four custom, in-house chips that will be developed for AI-related tasks and deployed within the next two years as part of the company’s data center expansion plans.

• NVIDIA announced a US$2 billion investment in European AI data center developer Nebius Group (NASDAQ:NBIS) to “enable Nebius to deploy more than 5 gigawatts of capacity by the end of 2030.” The two companies will collaborate on AI factory design and support, inference, fleet management and AI infrastructure deployment.

• Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) raised US$37 billion in bonds in the US, according to a securities form filed on Wednesday.

• Tesla CEO Elon Musk announced an xAI/Tesla joint project on Wednesday called Macrohard, which combines a Tesla-developed AI agent that processes real-time computer screen video and keyboard/mouse inputs from the past five seconds with xAI’s Grok large language model. The system is designed to “(emulate) the function of entire companies” autonomously.

• Google completed its acquisition of Wiz on Wednesday. The deal is designed to protect the infrastructure that makes Alphabet’s AI profitable.

• Mind Robotics announced a US$500 million Series A round co-led by Accel and Andreessen Horowitz. Expected to close later this month, this round follows a seed financing of US$115 million led by Eclipse Capital in late 2025.

• On Thursday, the Japanese payments app PayPay (NASDAQ:PAYP) made its Nasdaq debut, with its shares opening at US$19, 18.8 percent higher than their offer price, resulting in a market valuation of US$12.7 billion.

• Nscale, a British AI cloud provider backed by NVIDIA, is reportedly in talks to acquire a data center site in West Virginia ahead of a planned initial public offering (IPO). The offering could come as early as Q3 2026.

• Meta is reportedly delaying the launch of its latest AI model, code-named Avocado, until May, instead of this month, as its performance lags behind that of Google’s latest version of Gemini. The report stated that Meta is considering licensing Gemini from Google while it continues to develop Avocado.

• Apple said it will lower the fees it collects from app developers in China, dropping its commission on purchases from 30 percent to 25 percent, effective March 15, to apps for both iOS and iPadOS, following discussions with the Chinese regulators. The rate for miniapps will drop from 12 to 15 percent.

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) advanced by 3.9 percent, while the Invesco PHLX Semiconductor ETF (NASDAQ:SOXQ) gained 3.26 percent.

The VanEck Semiconductor ETF (NASDAQ:SMH) also increased by 2.85 percent.

Tech news to watch next week

Economic data releases and escalating tensions in the Iran war are poised to drive market volatility next week.

The US Federal Reserve will meet from March 17 to 18. Market participants expect no interest rate change.

Micron is due to release earnings for its second fiscal quarter after Wednesday’s market close. Analysts are forecasting earnings per share of US$8.18 to US$8.50 on the back of US$19.11 billion in revenue, driven by AI demand for HBM and DRAM. Strong results could signal sustained memory chip pricing power and AI infrastructure CAPEX growth, while guidance misses might pressure the sector amid supply chain scrutiny.

Investors will also be listening for several announcements from NVIDIA at its annual GTC event following a blog post published by CEO Jensen Huang. In it, he positions AI as reliant upon five layers: energy, chips, infrastructure, models and applications. NVIDIA is also expected to unveil NemoClaw, an open-source AI agent platform; according to sources for Wired, the company is already seeking partnerships with Salesforce, Cisco Systems (NASDAQ:CSCO), Google, Adobe (NASDAQ:ADBE) and CrowdStrike Holdings (NASDAQ:CRWD).

Shares of British geophysical services company Metatek Group are due to start trading on the Toronto Stock Exchange under the ticker MTEK next week, marking the first tech IPO on the TSX since 2021.

Filings indicate that Metatek plans to raise C$50 million for a valuation range of C$250 million to C$300 million, with pricing expected to be between C$5.75 and C$6.25 per share.