NEW YORK, February 7, 2026, 02:54 EST
- Chipmakers caught a strong bid Friday, with Nvidia jumping 7.8% and the Dow notching its first-ever close above 50,000.
- Investors face a difficult balance: 2026 AI infrastructure spending looks set for a steep climb, but concerns about profit for cloud and software companies won’t go away.
- After a turbulent run for AI-related tech, investors are now zeroed in on next week’s U.S. jobs and inflation data.
Nvidia rallied 7.8% Friday, pushing chipmakers higher and sending the Dow Jones Industrial Average past 50,000 for the first time. The PHLX semiconductor index tacked on 5.7%. Advanced Micro Devices jumped 8.3%, Broadcom added 7.1%. Amazon, meanwhile, slid 5.6% after issuing a cautious spending outlook. “There’s enough evidence that there’s real demand for AI products,” said Ross Mayfield, investment strategy analyst at Baird. 1
Investors are grappling with how to factor in a $600 billion artificial intelligence investment push planned by major tech players for 2026—a move that’s started rattling shareholders in the cloud and software sectors. According to Reuters, the S&P 500 software and services index has shed nearly $1 trillion in value since Jan. 28. “It’s not that the trade is over, but it got too pricey,” said Andrew Wells, chief investment officer at SanJac Alpha. 2
Amazon’s capex forecast for 2026 jumped to $200 billion, a sharp increase from the $131 billion outlined for 2025. For 2024, the leading hyperscalers—Amazon, Microsoft, Google, and Meta—are set to shell out north of $630 billion. 3
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang told CNBC that demand is “going through the roof” as major cloud players ramp up spending on AI hardware. He suggested the industry might be closing in on an “inflection point.” Nvidia shares, after Friday’s rally, have returned to break-even for 2026, according to Investopedia. 4
Nvidia jumped almost 7% by midday, MarketWatch reported, snapping back after five straight down sessions and putting the stock on track for its biggest single-day gain since April 2025. Hardware-oriented stocks like Super Micro Computer and Astera Labs caught some of the momentum, too, according to the report. 5
Nvidia pushed chip stocks higher in midday action, Seeking Alpha reported, with the broader market bouncing after a stretch of tech-driven declines, notably in software. The Nasdaq Composite gained roughly 1.2% at that point, according to the outlet. 6
Software stocks have come under fire lately, in part because of Anthropic. The company just rolled out Claude Opus 4.6, its latest model, and gave a sneak peek of new tools designed to let AI manage longer tasks and juggle multiple agents. Anthropic also hinted the system could process as many as 1 million “tokens”—those chunks of text that make up an AI prompt. “We are excited to partner and actually lower the floor to get more value out of those tools,” Scott White, Anthropic’s head of product for enterprise, told Reuters. 7
But there’s a catch: Wall Street wants evidence these investments will deliver, and yes, echoes of the dot-com bubble are resurfacing. MoffettNathanson analysts flagged that “magnitude of the spend is materially greater than consensus expected,” while AJ Bell’s Russ Mould cautioned it’s “easier to disappoint” when the trade gets crowded. 8
This week’s economic calendar gets crowded after a three-day government shutdown delayed key U.S. releases. Jobs and inflation numbers are on deck. “Rotation is the dominant theme this year,” Edward Jones’s Angelo Kourkafas pointed out. Forecasts from a Reuters poll put January payroll growth at 70,000. January’s consumer price index lands Friday. 9
Investors chased stocks poised to ride the AI expansion, with Nvidia out front as chip-related names bounced, according to a Bloomberg report on Yahoo Finance. 10
