MW Alphabet and Nvidia alone make up a third of the S&P 500's gains this year, in a sign of Big Tech's dominance

By Britney Nguyen

Big Tech on the whole accounts for almost half of the index's 2025 rise, according to DataTrek

Google parent Alphabet is on its way to being the best annual performer of the "Magnificent Seven" stocks for the first time.

Just two Big Tech stocks have accounted for more than a third of the S&P 500's gains so far this year, underscoring how the market has become increasingly concentrated around major companies.

Shares of Google parent Alphabet $(GOOGL)$ $(GOOG)$, along with Nvidia (NVDA), have contributed about 34% of the S&P 500's SPX year-to-date ascent, Nicholas Colas, co-founder of DataTrek Research, said in a note on Monday. Alphabet was the biggest winner, responsible on its own for 20% of the index's rise.

Overall, Big Tech stocks represent 49% of the S&P 500's total 16.4% gain on the year, Colas said. The S&P 500 is weighted by market capitalization, so large companies have an outsize impact on index performance.

But Nvidia was a major detractor to the index's performance in November, he noted. "Excluding Nvidia, the S&P 500 would have been up [0.4%] in November rather than its actual [0.1%] gain," he wrote.

After delivering another record quarter and reiterating strong guidance for the coming year in its earnings report last month, Nvidia's results were not enough to quell growing concerns around the AI trade and the sustainability of massive hyperscaler capital expenditures. Investors have also worried about investment deals between major players, including Nvidia, and more formidable competition from Alphabet in the semiconductor industry.

See more: Why the once-invincible Nvidia can't save the AI trade

But Nvidia's stock has been a strong gainer for the year, up 30%. CEO Jensen Huang has said the company has visibility into more than $500 billion in revenue from its Blackwell and Rubin AI platforms through 2026.

Despite recent jitters, investors are generally upbeat about Nvidia's opportunity in the current early innings of the AI data-center build-out. Huang has said he expects spending on AI infrastructure to reach between $3 trillion and $4 trillion worldwide by the end of the decade.

On the other hand, Alphabet was a positive contributor to the S&P 500 in November, Colas said, after its shares rallied on renewed hope and interest in Google's AI efforts.

Google released its latest Gemini 3 model in November, which it said outperformed OpenAI's ChatGPT 5.1 and Anthropic's Claude Sonnet 4.5 in certain tasks. The model is powered by Google's tensor processing units, which the company develops with Nvidia rival Broadcom $(AVGO)$.

Read: Google is crushing it. Why that's worrying investors in Nvidia and other AI stocks.

Melius analyst Ben Reitzes said in a November note that investors are likely spooked by Google's "AI comeback," and its implications for Nvidia and its AI rivals.

Alphabet "is the most vertically integrated hyperscaler" with its TPUs and custom networking, Reitzes said, making it a threat to hardware suppliers such as Nvidia. And if Google comes out ahead of OpenAI in the AI race, it could make it more difficult for the ChatGPT maker to follow through with multibillion-dollar financial commitments it has made in recent months to secure compute power for its AI data-center build-out. OpenAI's deals with Nvidia, Advanced Micro Devices $(AMD)$ and Broadcom to deploy multi-gigawatts' worth of AI chips have raised some concerns on Wall Street over AI spending.

-Britney Nguyen

This content was created by MarketWatch, which is operated by Dow Jones & Co. MarketWatch is published independently from Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal.

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

December 01, 2025 10:06 ET (15:06 GMT)

Copyright (c) 2025 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.