Bone’s getting picked clean (Getty Images)

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.

With investors now less worried about what a war and spike in oil prices will do to the global economy, they’ve returned to worrying about what AI tools will do to software stocks.

The iShares Expanded Tech Software ETF is getting dumped hard again on Thursday after having given up a gain of nearly 4% on Wednesday to close about 1% lower. That was the biggest reversal from well in the green to deep in the red for the software ETF in exactly one year, when stocks hit their 2025 lows the day before President Trump watered down his reciprocal tariff regime.

The drop comes a day after Anthropic launched Claude Managed Agents, designed to streamline, automate, and increase the use of its tools in workflows. The Claude maker, which seems to be going from strength to strength, recently talked up the power of its upcoming Mythos model, with OpenAI saying similar things about one of its own tools.

High-profile industry names punished on Thursday include Palantir Technologies, Atlassian, GitLab, ServiceNow, Workday, Adobe, and Salesforce.

While the software ETF is poised to close at a fresh 52-week low as of 11:17 a.m. ET, the VanEck Semiconductor ETF is on track to post a record closing high.

The divergence between the two industries within tech should come as no surprise. In fact, it’s never been more likely that if semis are outperforming the S&P 500, software is lagging (and vice versa):

The fundamentals behind the mechanics: the true enablers of software disruption (presumably Anthropic, and to a lesser extent OpenAI) may be privately held. Those are the firms that are lowering the barriers to entry to software and raising the prospect of lower supply, or a lower cost of production. But in order to do that, these AI tools need to be powered by a ton of chips (and memory, and networking equipment), making that hardware scarce. And there’s certainly a number of publicly traded companies available that investors have loved as beneficiaries of this demand for compute.

Matt Phillips2h

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 Kawa3h

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 Phillips4h

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 Rim4h

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.

CEO Andy Jassy’s 2025 Letter to Shareholders

Luke Kawa5h

CoreWeave expands its AI compute sales deal with Meta by $21 billion

CoreWeave announced that it’s significantly boosting its sales of AI computing capacity to Meta.

The neocloud will now provide an additional $21 billion in AI compute to the social media giant through December 2032.

CoreWeave had previously booked a $14.2 billion deal back in September that included an option to expand the commitment, which has been exercised with today’s announcement along with new compute purchased.

Shares jumped in premarket trading, but gave all that advance and then some to trade down 3.5% as of 10:10 a.m. ET.

CoreWeave recently closed a financing deal that management billed as the first of its kind, as it was backed by its chips and Meta’s AI compute purchase. This ability to effectively borrow Meta’s superior creditworthiness helped CoreWeave reduce its cost of debt.

Separately, CoreWeave also announced that it intends to issue $3 billion in senior convertible notes due in 2032 and $1.25 billion in senior notes due in 2031 in separate private offerings.

“As spending on AI infrastructure continues to accelerate so does the need for additional debt funding, with both Meta and CoreWeave likely to continue to tap debt markets as their cloud capacity agreement expands,” wrote Bloomberg Intelligence credit analysts Robert Schiffman and Alex Reid.

Update (10:34 a.m. ET): A previous version of this post erroneously stated that the $21 billion deal was inclusive of the prior $14.2 billion in purchase commitments.