The U.S. stock market had a blockbuster week as major tech giants surged, adding hundreds of billions in market value despite mixed performances across the sector.
Alphabet shares jumped 9% after a U.S. court ruling in its antitrust case. While Google was found in violation, Judge Amit Mehta stopped short of forcing the company to sell its Chrome browser, instead requiring it to share search data with rivals.
The decision propelled Alphabet up more than 10% for the week and lifted Apple by 3.2%, as the lucrative deal making Google the default search engine on iPhones remains intact. Analysts at Wedbush said the ruling removed a “black cloud” over both companies and could pave the way for deeper collaboration in artificial intelligence through Google’s Gemini models.
Chipmaker Broadcom stole headlines after announcing a $10 billion contract with a new client, widely believed to be OpenAI. Shares soared 13% in the week, pushing its market cap to roughly $1.6 trillion.
Already a key supplier of custom AI chips for Google, Meta, and ByteDance, Broadcom is now seen as “firing on all cylinders,” according to Barclays, which raised its price target for the stock.
Not all Big Tech names shared the momentum. Nvidia dropped more than 4%, extending a four-week decline, though it remains the world’s largest company with a market value above $4 trillion. Microsoft also slipped for a fifth straight week but is still up 21% over the past year.
Tesla, on the other hand, gained 5% after the company unveiled a new compensation plan for CEO Elon Musk worth up to nearly $1 trillion if Tesla’s market cap doubles to $2 trillion.
In total, the eight largest U.S. tech companies added $420 billion in market cap, raising their combined value to $21 trillion — around 36% of the S&P 500.
Howard Silverblatt of S&P Dow Jones Indices noted that such dominance has “no historical comparison.” With the rapid rise of AI and shifting regulatory landscapes, the power balance in global technology is evolving at breakneck speed.