A billion here, a trillion there, pretty soon it's going to start adding up to real money.

The tech market's take on an age-old Washington saying about the nature of political spending lays bare the sheer size of the market and its influence over all things in the global financial markets these days.

Advanced Micro Devices, the AI chip maker and early Nvidia challenger, will likely add $100 billion in equity value at the start of trading Wednesday, having topped Wall Street's earnings forecasts last night and issued a robust outlook tied to massive growth in its data center business.

Samsung Electronics, meanwhile, topped the $1 trillion threshold, in terms of market value, in overnight trading as the chip maker continues to ride that AI investment wave. The group is now worth more than Berkshire Hathaway, and is just a few ticks shy of topping Walmart.

Tech stocks, of course, drove the wider market to record highs on Tuesday, with Google parent Alphabet set to overtake Nvidia as the world's most valuable company over the coming days and both titans closing in on a $5 trillion market capitalization.

Those two companies, by themselves, would top the value of Shanghai Composite -- the world's biggest stock market outside the U.S.

The tech complex, including both the Magnificent Seven cohort of megacap stocks and the sundry chipmaking giants that orbit around them, are completely dominating market sentiment at present -- powering record gains for the Nasdaq on Wednesday and driving more than two-thirds of the post Iran war growth for the S&P 500.

"Before the Age of AI, economists were taught that there are only three factors of production: Land, Labor, and Capital," said stock market veteran Ed Yardeni. "Now, economists should recognize that there is a fourth factor of production: Data."

And there's a lot more than a trillion dollar's worth of that.

-- Martin Baccardax

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AMD's Rising Outlook Boosted by Flood of AI Spending

The expected flood of spending on artificial intelligence has lifted the outlook for Advanced Micro Devices, a competitor in the AI chip world to Nvidia. CEO Lisa Su said they have increasing confidence in their ability to deliver tens of billions of dollars of annual data center revenue in 2027.

   -- Second-quarter revenue is projected to be $11.2 billion at the midpoint 
      of a range. On a conference call, management said server growth is 
      expected to meaningfully accelerate, and data center is now the primary 
      driver of revenue and earnings growth. 
 
   -- First-quarter sales in AMD's all-important data-center segment rose 57%, 
      to $5.8 billion. Overall first-quarter revenue rose 38% to $10.25 billion, 
      and results beat expectations. Su said they expect to exceed the long 
      term growth target of greater than 80% in the coming years. 
 
   -- Expectations for the chip maker have soared in recent years. When 
      OpenAI's ChapGPT lit the AI prairie fire in 2022, the standard kit for AI 
      computing was Nvidia chips and software -- its data center sales have 
      risen from $15 billion a year to $194 billion last year. 
 
   -- Nvidia gear remains the most prized, but companies have been looking to 
      diversify their supply chains. AMD is the only other major GPU maker in 
      the world, so it was natural for some of these Nvidia customers to turn 
      to AMD, despite Nvidia starting this race with a 15-year lead in AI 
      computing. 

What's Next: AMD will start shipping on contracts with Meta Platforms and OpenAI in the second half of 2026. Su also spoke of the rise of CPUs in AI data centers, saying the total addressable market for the products would grow faster than expected -- by 35% a year to $120 billion by 2030.

-- Adam Levine and Liz Moyer

U.S. and Iran Near Peace Agreement, According to Report

The Trump administration believes it is nearing an agreement with Tehran on a preliminary deal to end the conflict, according to a report. It is preparing a memo with a framework for more detailed negotiations, Axios reported, citing U.S. officials. Oil prices fell first thing Wednesday.

   -- After the U.S. Navy began escorting commercial vessels through the Strait 
      of Hormuz, President Donald Trump hit pause on the operation, having 
      cited progress in a deal with Iran. That was before the latest reports. 
 
   -- Trump said amid deal progress, the sides mutually agreed that while the 
      Navy's blockade of Iran's ports continues, "Project Freedom (The Movement 
      of Ships through the Strait of Hormuz) will be paused for a short period 
      of time" to see whether an agreement can be finalized and signed," he 
      said. 
 
   -- Crude prices cooled off Tuesday after surging on Monday as Iran fired 
      cruise missiles at American warships and sent drones toward civilian 
      ships. 
 
   -- Danish containership operator A.P. Moller-Maersk's Alliance Fairfax 
      vehicle carrier crossed the Strait of Hormuz with help from the U.S. 
      military. Only six ships crossed on Monday, and only one on Tuesday, down 
      from about 130 a day before the war, according to S&P Global Market 
      Intelligence. 

What's Next: Kpler senior analyst Naveen Das told The Wall Street Journal that there still isn't the appetite in the shipping industry "to take the risk to go back in," adding that if a ship took that risk and got hit, the reputational fallout would be "huge."

-- Anita Hamilton, Janet H. Cho, and Liz Moyer

AI Models Face U.S. Review Before Release. What It Means.

The government has pledged to preview new artificial intelligence models from major tech companies before they are released. The work is being done through the Commerce Department's Center for AI Standards and Innovation, which has agreements with Alphabet, Microsoft, and xAI, now a part of SpaceX.

   -- It's to help ensure safety and security. A prior collaboration included 
      OpenAI and Anthropic related to an action plan released by the Trump 
      administration in July 2025, aiming to accelerate innovation, promote 
      data center building, and uphold free speech in frontier [AI] models. 
 
   -- The reviews can't force changes. And the government should probably be 
      doing something to understand AI development. Anthropic was designated a 
      supply chain risk by the Defense Department in late February, effectively 
      barring it from doing government business and preventing defense 
      contractors from using Anthropic technology. 
 
   -- After the designation, Dean Ball, a former advisor to President Trump, 
      said the move made the administration the strictest de facto regulator of 
      AI technology on the planet. Anthropic has since announced Mythos, a tool 
      that can discover vulnerabilities in computer code. It chose not to 
      release Mythos widely. 
 
   -- Ball argued for a bipartisan approach to AI regulation, citing Mythos, 
      and saying in a New York Times guest essay Monday that "at a minimum, 
      Congress should mandate audits of AI developers' safety claims and 
      processes, requiring that they be conducted by independent expert bodies 
      overseen by the government." 

What's Next: If regulation isn't done right, smaller players could lose out to larger companies that can afford to work with the government, stifling the innovation the Trump administration hopes to achieve. And if Democrats retake Congress this fall, regulation could become a bigger issue.

-- Al Root

SEC Proposes Allowing Companies to Ditch Quarterly Reports

President Trump and SEC Chair Paul Atkins have touted the benefits of less frequent financial reporting, saying it would save money, shift management to a longer term focus, and possibly encourage more companies to go public. That time is here, with a proposal to allow companies to report semiannually, instead.

   -- It's unclear how many companies would eventually make the change, but 
      some investor groups are uneasy about the idea. Companies that report 
      semiannually would stop filing three 10-Q forms and an annual report and 
      instead file one new 10-S form and the annual report, the proposal says. 
 
   -- The SEC decades ago allowed companies to report twice a year but began to 
      require quarterly reports in 1970. The Investment Company Institute, 
      whose members include mutual funds, said any changes should balance 
      reducing unnecessary compliance burdens and preserving quality 
      disclosures. 
 
   -- Likewise, the Managed Funds Association, a trade group for hedge funds 
      and other asset managers says it shares the goal of reducing burdens on 
      public companies, but any changes "must balance that objective with the 
      needs of investors." 
 
   -- While Atkins says more companies might consider public listings, skeptics 
      of that view said the decline in initial public offerings in recent 
      decades has been driven mostly by the rise of large venture-capital firms 
      that can satisfy companies' funding needs. 

What's Next: The SEC said it would officially publish the proposal in the Federal Register in the next few days, after which the public can comment on the rule for 60 days. Then the SEC will consider the comments and publish a final rule.

-- Joe Light and Janet H. Cho

Sandisk Joins $200 Billion Club Amid AI Boom

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