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Stocks continue winning streak on ceasefire optimism

Reports of an agreement between Israel and Lebanon to begin negotiations raised optimism for a sustained ceasefire.

The S&P 500 rose for the seventh consecutive session, its longest winning streak since October. The Nasdaq 100 and Russell 2000 climbed as well, as reports of an agreement between Israel and Lebanon to begin negotiations raised optimism for a sustained ceasefire.

Amazon, which surged after the company disclosed that its cloud unit’s AI revenue run rate topped $15 billion in the first quarter of 2026, helped power consumer discretionary to today’s best-performing sector. Energy was the worst performer as oil rose, but pared earlier gains.

Stocks that moved higher:

CoreWeave rose after announcing that it’s significantly boosting its sales of AI computing capacity to Meta.
Sandisk spiked as Bernstein boosted its earnings estimates for the company, with analysts raising their price target to $1,250 from $1,000, the most optimistic view of the 23 analysts polled by Bloomberg.
Infleqtion spiked after announcing that it’s providing upgraded quantum hardware to the International Space Station. In its 2025 results released after the close yesterday, the quantum computing company said it’s aiming to book $40 million in sales this year.
Intel rose on news of a bigger partnership with Google for AI chips.
STAAR Surgical skyrocketed after the company announced that its Q1 2026 net sales are expected to be over $90 million, exceeding analysts’ expectations of $71 million.
BlackBerry gained after its fiscal Q1 2027 and full-year sales guidance exceeded estimates.

Stocks that moved lower:

Software stocks Palantir, ServiceNow, Adobe, Salesforce, Workday, GitLab, and Atlassian fell as ebbing geopolitical risks prompted a renewed focus on long-term disruption.
Despite delivering a massive beat on Q3 sales and adjusted EBITDA after the bell yesterday, Applied Digital’s stock ran into some overhead resistance.
Cybersecurity stocks CrowdStrike, Zscaler, Cloudflare, and Palo Alto Networks sank as investors were spooked by powerful new AI models from OpenAI and Anthropic, which could overwhelm current cyber defenses.

Software stocks fall as ebbing geopolitical risks prompt renewed focus on long-term disruption

In fact, it’s never been more likely that if semis are outperforming the S&P 500, software is lagging.

Luke Kawa5h

Matt Phillips6h

Sandisk jumps as Bernstein raises price target to a Wall Street high of $1,250

Sandisk spiked Thursday as Bernstein boosted its earnings estimates for the company, with analysts raising their price target to $1,250 from $1,000, the most optimistic view of the 23 analysts polled by Bloomberg.

The gains come amid a fairly subdued day for broad indexes and other AI memory plays like Micron, Seagate Technology Holdings, and Western Digital.

Bernstein’s more bullish view comes after a surge in prices of NAND flash memory based on AI demand. (NAND flash is used for long-term data storage and is also a key input to consumer products like phones and other devices.)

“Memory prices continue to surprise to the upside with NAND showing the strongest increases and continued acceleration,” Bernstein wrote.

The analysts — led by Mark C. Newman — raised their base case for next fiscal year’s adjusted earnings per share by 58% to $144, from $91. (That new forecast now blows away the Wall Street consensus estimate of $94.07, per FactSet.) The new price target implies a gain of roughly 50% from where the stock is currently.

Bernstein analysts even threw out a “blue-sky scenario” price target of $3,000 for Sandisk, should an even more bullish scene play out for both earnings and market valuations.

Up nearly 250% this year, Sandisk has been the best-performing stock in the S&P 500. It reports earnings on April 30 after the close.

Luke Kawa7h

Infleqtion soars after announcing it’s providing upgraded quantum hardware to the International Space Station

Quantum technology firm Infleqtion is booming in early trading after announcing that it would be providing upgraded quantum hardware to the International Space Station as part of a cargo mission slated to launch as early as Friday.

The equipment “is designed to support the stable and simultaneous production of dual-species quantum degenerate gases using rubidium and potassium atoms, one of the long-standing scientific objectives of the mission,” per the press release, and will expand the Cold Atom Laboratory’s ability “to investigate ultracold matter and demonstrate advanced quantum sensing in space, under real operating conditions.”

After the close on Wednesday, the company said it was targeting sales of $40 million this year, which if achieved would have revenue growth accelerating to 23% from 12% in 2025.

“Space remains a particularly important market for us in a major area of growth,” CEO Matt Kinsella said during a conference call on Wednesday, highlighting that the company has partnered with NASA for over a decade.

Read more: Infleqtion CEO Matt Kinsella on how the newly public quantum computing company is “following in the footsteps of Nvidia”

Matt Phillips8h

Intel announces custom chip collaboration with Google Cloud for AI

Intel shares rose early Thursday after it announced a new multiyear collaboration with Alphabet’s Google Cloud division on AI infrastructure.

The deal includes co-development of custom chips for Google’s needs, a program that Intel says is “reinforcing the critical role of CPUs and custom infrastructure processing units (IPUs) in scaling modern, heterogeneous AI systems.”

Shares popped into positive territory on the premarket announcement.

Intel, Google Deepen Collaboration to Advance AI Infrastructure

Hyunsoo Rim8h

Amazon cloud unit’s AI revenue run rate exceeds $15 billion, CEO says

Amazon is up nearly 2% in premarket trading after the company disclosed that its cloud unit’s AI revenue run rate topped $15 billion in the first quarter of 2026, the first hard number the company’s provided for its top-line AI performance.

Sales generated from the emergent technology are “ascending rapidly” and already 260x what Amazon Web Services revenues were at a similar time in its maturity, CEO Andy Jassy wrote in his letter to shareholders.