A pause in borrowing costs unleashed another uptick on technology shares, which rose 3% in a volatile week for U.S. stocks.

Anthropic will pay Akamai Technologies at least $11.6 billion to use its cloud infrastructure and software over seven years in an expansion of the partnership between the two companies. The deal provides for a potential $9 billion expansion, representing a total potential commitment of around $20 billion, Akamai said Thursday. The new commitment adds to upwards of $2.8 billion in existing multi-year cloud commitments across its customer base announced this year.

A federal appeals court upheld the Defense Department's decision to designate Anthropic a security risk, giving the Trump administration a win in its complicated feud with one of the nation's top artificial-intelligence developers. The federal appeals court in Washington said in a 2-1 decision that the law giving the Pentagon the authority to deem a company a supply-chain risk gave Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth the latitude to take the action against Anthropic because the company's refusal to have its AI tools used in mass surveillance or autonomous weapons could undermine military operations.

Microsoft ended the week with its highest close since November, rising 3.7% to $516.17, making it the best performer in the Dow Jones Industrial Average. The company announced new capabilities for its Copilot app, part of its push to monetize its artificial intelligence.