Global Stocks Climb as Investors Keep Backing the AI Boom

Stock markets around the world moved higher as investors kept wagering on strong prospects for the technology giants at the center of the artificial intelligence boom.

On Tuesday, all three major US stock indexes finished higher. The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite led with a 1.18 percent gain, while the benchmark S&P 500 rose 0.6 percent. The narrower Dow Jones Industrial Average edged up just 0.03 percent.

Five of the so-called Magnificent Seven tech stocks advanced, with Tesla in front at 4.04 percent. Amazon added 1.61 percent, Apple gained 0.93 percent and Alphabet rose 0.9 percent. Nvidia, the world's most valuable public company, climbed almost 1 percent after announcing a $3bn investment in Meta's equity offering. Meta itself fell 1.64 percent and Microsoft slipped 0.24 percent. Elsewhere in the sector, Advanced Micro Devices rose 5.45 percent, Broadcom gained 4 percent and Intel added 3.61 percent.

The momentum carried into Asia Pacific trading on Wednesday, with markets in Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and Australia all higher. Seoul's KOSPI led the region, up 5.84 percent as of 03:00 GMT.

That jump followed third-quarter results from South Korea's SK Hynix, one of the world's top three memory chip makers. The company reported operating profit that soared about 630 percent from a year earlier to 83.33 trillion won, or $62.8bn. Its shares listed in South Korea rose more than 8 percent after the announcement.

Japan's Nikkei 225 gained 1.26 percent and Taiwan's TAIEX rose 1.32 percent. Sydney's S&P/ASX 200 was up a more modest 0.11 percent.

Attention is now turning to the next batch of earnings from big technology companies, as investors try to judge whether their enormous AI spending will pay off. Microsoft and Alphabet report on Wednesday, Amazon follows on Thursday and Apple on Monday. On Monday, AI developer Anthropic filed paperwork for its widely anticipated IPO, disclosing a net loss of $80.7bn in the first half of 2026 on $16.3bn in revenue.

Technology firms have each poured hundreds of billions of dollars into AI infrastructure, fueling debate over whether a speculative bubble resembling the one before the 2000 dot-com crash could be building. Gartner, a technology insights company, forecasts global AI investment will reach $2.7 trillion in 2026 and $3.6 trillion in 2027.

Oil prices, elevated since the US-Israel war on Iran began, rose about 1 percent as Asian markets opened on Wednesday. The conflict in the Middle East continues, including hostilities between Saudi Arabia and Yemen's Iran-aligned Houthis. Brent crude futures, the global benchmark, stood at about $115 a barrel, up 59 percent from before the war started.