Shares of Tesla (TSLA) rose on Wednesday as investors found renewed encouragement in the company’s core electric-vehicle business following another strong month of European sales growth.

The stock climbed 1.7% to $440.90 in early trading, putting Tesla on track for a fifth consecutive winning session.

Broader markets were also higher, with S&P 500 futures up 0.4% and Dow Jones Industrial Average futures rising 0.5%.

Helping sentiment was fresh European registration data showing Tesla sold 10,654 vehicles in April, up 46.5% from a year earlier.

The strong monthly performance lifted Tesla’s total European sales for 2026 to 89,429 vehicles, representing growth of 45.8% year-over-year.

The rebound marks a notable turnaround for Tesla in Europe after the company suffered back-to-back annual declines in regional sales.

In 2025, Tesla sold 238,656 vehicles across Europe, down 26.9% from the previous year.

Europe’s EV market continues to accelerate

The broader European electric vehicle market has also strengthened considerably this year, helped in part by elevated fuel prices following geopolitical tensions in the Middle East.

Europeans purchased nearly 980,000 fully electric vehicles through April, up 29.1% from the same period last year.

Battery-electric vehicles accounted for roughly 22% of all new car sales during April.

According to data released by the European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association, overall EU car registrations rose 5.1% year-over-year in April to 972,314 vehicles.

Battery-electric vehicle sales surged 37.7%, substantially outpacing the broader automotive market.

Tesla’s EU registrations alone jumped 67.2% to 9,169 vehicles during the month, lifting its market share to 0.9% from 0.6% a year earlier.

Chinese rivals continue gaining ground

While Tesla’s recovery has improved sentiment, competition in Europe continues intensifying as Chinese automakers aggressively expand their presence.

BYD more than doubled April EU sales, while Chery Automobile nearly quadrupled registrations.

SAIC Motor, owner of the MG brand, reported a 24.6% increase in April sales.

For the first four months of 2026, battery-electric vehicles accounted for 19.7% of the European market, up from 15.3% a year earlier.

Tesla’s sales during that period rose 61.7%, while BYD’s surged 152.9%.

Investors still focused on AI and margins

Despite improving vehicle sales trends, investor focus remains heavily centered on Tesla’s broader artificial intelligence ambitions.

The company’s long-term valuation increasingly depends on its “physical AI” initiatives, including autonomous driving, robotaxis and humanoid robotics.

Tesla has already launched robotaxi operations in several US cities, though expansion has progressed more slowly than many investors expected.

Meanwhile, analysts continue watching Tesla’s pricing strategy closely as the company attempts to balance demand and profitability.

Last week, Evercore ISI noted Tesla raised prices on higher-end Model Y trims in the United States by up to $1,000.

The firm said elevated gasoline prices could help support EV demand and stabilize Tesla’s pricing power despite weaker overall U.S. electric vehicle demand.

Evercore estimates US EV demand has fallen 15% to 20% year-over-year and remains significantly below peak levels.

The firm projects Tesla will deliver roughly 400,000 vehicles during the second quarter.

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AI-related stocks rallied sharply on Friday as investors piled back into artificial intelligence and technology names amid hopes for progress in US-Iran negotiations and renewed momentum across Wall Street.

The broader market pushed higher, with the S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite reaching fresh all-time intraday highs as traders reacted to signs that diplomatic efforts between the United States and Iran could still prevent a broader escalation in the Middle East conflict.

The S&P 500 rose 0.6%, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite gained 1.1%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average hovered near flat levels.

President Donald Trump said Monday that talks with Iran were “proceeding nicely,” although he also warned the United States could move offensively if negotiations collapse.

At the same time, the US military confirmed it carried out what it described as “self defense” strikes in southern Iran targeting missile launch sites and Iranian naval units attempting to place mines.

Qualcomm, AMD, Intel and memory stocks lead gains

Among chipmakers, Qualcomm surged roughly 6% after expanding its partnership with Stellantis around Snapdragon Digital Chassis systems for next-generation vehicles.

Advanced Micro Devices climbed nearly 5% after chief executive Lisa Su said the company is working with Taiwanese partners to expand production capacity amid rising AI-related demand.

Several other semiconductor names also advanced strongly. Intel stock surged around 4%.

Additional gains spread across the broader semiconductor ecosystem, with Arm Holdings, Lattice Semiconductor and Marvell Technology all moving higher.

The strongest move came from Micron Technology, whose shares surged 17% and pushed the company above a $1 trillion market capitalization.

The rally was fueled by growing optimism around long-term memory-chip demand tied to artificial intelligence infrastructure buildouts.

Analysts at UBS recently argued the stock could more than double from current levels, citing the benefits of Micron’s long-term supply agreements and tightening memory markets.

Other memory-related names also rallied strongly.

Seagate Technology gained roughly 3%, while Western Digital jumped about 8%.

The Roundhill Memory ETF climbed approximately 12%.

Memory chips have become one of the hottest themes in semiconductors this year as supply constraints, AI server demand and rising high-bandwidth memory requirements continue reshaping the industry.

AI demand to remain strong

Meanwhile, Nvidia continued reinforcing its longer-term AI ambitions beyond graphics processors.

Chief executive Jensen Huang said over the weekend that Nvidia sees a future $200 billion CPU opportunity, including China, as AI workloads increasingly shift toward inference and agentic AI systems.

During Nvidia’s recent earnings call, Huang said the company’s new “Vera” CPU architecture opens access to a massive new addressable market beyond GPUs.

The rise of agentic AI — systems capable of autonomous reasoning and task execution — is broadening demand across the semiconductor ecosystem and increasing the importance of CPUs alongside traditional AI accelerators.

Nvidia is increasingly positioning itself not only as the dominant GPU provider, but as a full-stack AI infrastructure company spanning processors, networking, software and complete computing platforms.

The company remains at the center of Wall Street’s AI spending narrative as hyperscalers, governments and enterprises continue dramatically increasing infrastructure investments tied to artificial intelligence.

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Nvidia has delivered another blockbuster quarter, but one top-ranked investor says the market is still missing the bigger story.

The chipmaker reported record first-quarter revenue of $81.6 billion, up 85% from a year earlier, as demand for AI infrastructure continued to surge.

Yet the bull case is no longer just about selling more GPUs to Microsoft, Amazon, or Google.

Yiannis Zourmpanos, a five-star investor ranked among the top 1% of stock pros tracked by TipRanks, argues that Nvidia is quietly becoming the foundation layer of the AI economy itself.

That shift, he says, could leave the stock with another 40% upside.

Nvidia’s quiet identity shift

For years, the Nvidia story was easy to understand as cloud companies rushed to buy Nvidia’s AI chips, pushing demand and profits sharply higher.

That story is still true, but Zourmpanos says it is no longer enough. In his view, Nvidia has moved beyond the old GPU supply-and-demand trade.

The company is now monetising the full AI stack, from compute and networking to orchestration, sovereign AI and CPUs.

In simpler terms, Nvidia is no longer just selling the bricks for the AI boom; it is increasingly shaping the whole construction site.

The latest earnings support that view.

Nvidia’s data centre revenue hit a record $75.2 billion in the quarter, up 92% from a year earlier.

Gross margin stood at 74.9%, showing that the company still has strong pricing power even as its revenue base has become enormous.

Nvidia also guided for second-quarter revenue of about $91 billion, plus or minus 2%, ahead of what analysts had expected.

That is why Zourmpanos called Nvidia the “foundational infrastructure layer” of AI.

Why the CPU move could lock out competitors

The most important part of the argument may not be GPUs at all.

Zourmpanos points to Nvidia’s expectations of $20 billion in CPU revenue this year as a sign that the company is expanding its role inside AI data centres.

CPUs are the general-purpose processors that help coordinate workloads.

GPUs do the heavy lifting for AI, but CPUs, networking and software increasingly determine how efficiently the entire system works.

If Nvidia can bundle CPUs, GPUs, networking and software into one tightly connected platform, switching away from it becomes harder for customers.

A cloud provider would not simply be swapping one chip for another; it could be ripping out part of the operating system of its AI factory.

Zourmpanos argues that Nvidia’s broader platform “increases barriers to entry” because competitors are no longer fighting just a chip company but an ecosystem.

What the numbers show?

Wall Street is broadly on board with the bullish view.

TipRanks data cited in the report shows Nvidia with a Strong Buy consensus rating, based on 39 Buy ratings, one Hold and one Sell.

The cited average 12-month price target of $301.29 implies gains of just under 40% from the share price used in that analysis.

That upside may look surprising after Nvidia’s huge run. But the bullish case rests on the idea that investors are still valuing the company too narrowly.

There are risks as AI spending could slow, or customers may push harder on price.

Regulators may scrutinise Nvidia’s dominance as cloud companies are investing in their own silicon to reduce dependence on outside suppliers.

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Silicon Valley is heading toward what could become one of the most consequential listing waves in modern market history, with artificial intelligence heavyweights SpaceX, OpenAI, and Anthropic preparing to enter public markets at valuations that could redraw the hierarchy of global corporations.

After several subdued years for technology listings, the expected debuts of the three companies are reigniting excitement across Wall Street.

Bankers, venture capital firms, and retail investors are positioning themselves for offerings that could collectively absorb hundreds of billions of dollars in market capitalisation and redefine how public investors participate in the AI economy.

“In two decades, I haven’t seen private companies that are this meaningful and are this impactful,” said Jeremy Abelson, an investor at Irving Investors, a firm that backs start-ups before they go public, in a NYT report.

“Not only are they bigger and more relevant, but they’re incredible companies with numbers that we’ve never seen before, ever.”

However, while supporters argue the companies represent transformative platforms with unprecedented growth potential, critics warn that valuations are racing far ahead of proven profitability.

SpaceX’s IPO filing triggers widespread scrutiny

Among the upcoming debuts, Elon Musk’s SpaceX is expected to dominate investor attention.

The rocket and satellite company confirmed in a regulatory filing on Thursday that it plans to pursue a Nasdaq listing, with reports indicating the company could seek a valuation between $1.75 trillion and $2 trillion.

SpaceX is reportedly aiming to raise roughly $75 billion, a figure that would shatter the previous US IPO record set by Alibaba’s $21.8 billion listing in 2014.

The company has evolved from a launch provider into a sprawling technology empire spanning satellite broadband, reusable rockets, AI infrastructure, and ambitions to colonise Mars.

SpaceX’s valuation pitch increasingly rests not only on its existing operations, but on future industries Musk believes the company can dominate.

Investors are being asked to bet on a chain reaction of technological and commercial breakthroughs: Starlink generating cash flow, Starship dramatically reducing launch costs, and lower-cost space access eventually supporting massive AI and data-centre businesses in orbit.

“The risk isn’t whether SpaceX is a real business; it clearly is,” said Josh Gilbert, analyst at eToro, a trading platform where the stock will be available on the day of debut, in a Reuters report.

“The risk is whether a $1.75 trillion valuation adequately prices in the execution challenges that come with being part rocket company, part internet provider, part AI venture, and very much driven by the vision of one individual.”

Despite the excitement surrounding the listing, SpaceX’s S-1 filing revealed mounting financial pressures.

The company posted losses of $4.28 billion in the three months ended March 31, an eightfold increase from a year earlier.

Those losses are likely to complicate traditional valuation models and reinforce the idea that investors are largely buying into Musk’s long-term vision rather than near-term earnings.

Economist Jay Ritter of the University of Florida, often referred to as “Mr. IPO,” found that mega-cap IPO companies typically underperform the market by 3% to 5% annually over the five years following an IPO.

His research also showed that companies entering public markets with more than $1 billion in revenue have produced market-adjusted returns of minus 2.1% over three years.

Still, analysts believe retail enthusiasm around Musk could override many conventional valuation concerns.

“Humans are prone to herding and when they hear about how monumental this may be, they don’t want to miss out,” Brian Jacobsen, chief economic strategist at Annex Wealth Management, said in a Reuters report.

Unlike traditional IPOs built around predictable earnings and stable forecasts, SpaceX is marketing itself as a once-in-a-generation platform company tied to the future of AI, communications, and space infrastructure.

OpenAI could list in September, but profitability and spending questions remain

OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, is also moving closer toward a public debut after years of explosive growth and escalating competition.

According to reports, the company has been working with Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley on a draft IPO prospectus and may file confidentially with regulators in the coming weeks.

OpenAI is reportedly targeting a listing as early as September.

“Resolving that legal overhang removed a major obstacle to an IPO and likely gave OpenAI the confidence to accelerate its timeline,” IPOX Vice President Kat Liu said in a Reuters report.

OpenAI was last valued at $852 billion, while prediction market traders on Polymarket see a strong possibility that the stock could finish its first trading session above a $1.4 trillion valuation.

The company’s rise since launching ChatGPT in late 2022 has helped ignite the global AI investment frenzy. 

Yet investor concerns have also mounted over its massive spending requirements, leadership turnover, and questions about long-term profitability.

The Information reported that OpenAI expects to burn roughly $25 billion this year alone.

The company generated more than $13 billion in revenue last year but reportedly expects to spend $115 billion over the next four years as competition intensifies.

OpenAI’s dominance is increasingly being challenged by rivals, including Alphabet-owned Google and Anthropic.

Google recently said its Gemini app had reached 900 million active users, matching ChatGPT’s scale.

At the same time, OpenAI continues renegotiating partnerships, expanding enterprise services, and investing heavily in computing infrastructure.

Fabien Yip, market analyst at IG, said OpenAI’s eventual listing could become the benchmark for how public markets value standalone AI companies.

“Depending on the sequencing relative to Anthropic, OpenAI’s debut may establish the first US benchmark for pure-play AI model valuations, with direct read-through to its infrastructure partners Nvidia, Oracle, and CoreWeave,” Yip wrote.

She added that the IPO could create more complicated consequences for Microsoft and SoftBank, whose investments in OpenAI may be repriced once public investors can directly buy shares in the AI company itself.

Anthropic edges toward profitability ahead of IPO

Anthropic, meanwhile, is emerging as a potentially more financially disciplined AI contender.

Prediction market traders currently place high odds on Anthropic completing an IPO this year, while reports suggest the company is discussing a funding round at a valuation approaching $900 billion.

Unlike many AI rivals, Anthropic is reportedly nearing profitability.

A person familiar with the matter told Reuters that the company could post its first quarterly operating profit soon, as enterprise demand for its Claude AI models accelerates. 

Anthropic’s June-quarter revenue is expected to reach at least $10.9 billion, more than double the prior quarter’s level.

The company’s Claude products are increasingly being used by software developers and enterprises for programming assistance and cybersecurity applications.

According to The Wall Street Journal, Anthropic expects to break even by 2028 — earlier than OpenAI’s projected profitability timeline.

“A successful Anthropic IPO would crystallise gains for Amazon and Alphabet,” Yip said, adding that companies such as Nvidia and Broadcom could also benefit from Anthropic’s infrastructure spending.

Yip added that the competitive dislocation is already visible: Anthropic’s Claude Cowork and Claude Code products have triggered a broad repricing of enterprise software, with Salesforce and ServiceNow each losing approximately a third of their market value year-to-date, while Thomson Reuters, RELX, and FactSet bore the brunt of investor concerns over AI disruption to legal and financial data workflows.

“A public listing at a near-trillion-dollar valuation would likely entrench and accelerate that repricing,” she said.

Why investors must exercise caution

None of the three companies has yet delivered a full-year profit, although Anthropic is widely expected to report its first profitable quarter in its upcoming results.

Even so, analysts say the underlying economics of these AI businesses remain difficult to assess, with limited transparency around long-term profitability and spending requirements prompting some market watchers to caution investors against chasing the IPO frenzy too aggressively.

The enormous valuations attached to all three companies are also beginning to revive memories of previous speculative booms.

“I see it as a market top,” John Blank, chief equity strategist at Zacks, told CNBC’s Squawk Box Europe on Thursday.

“Everybody knows the top is pretty close to being around and usually it is advertised by these giant IPOs. Back in 1999, we saw the same kind of thing where people were just rushing to get these IPOs out.”

Combined valuations for SpaceX, OpenAI, and Anthropic could place all three comfortably above the $1 trillion mark, rivaling companies such as Berkshire Hathaway, Meta, and Tesla.

Deutsche Bank analyst Adrian Cox noted in a Thursday report that the revenue gap between traditional corporate giants and the new wave of AI companies remains stark despite their soaring valuations.

Berkshire Hathaway generated more than $350 billion in revenue last year, compared with SpaceX’s $18.67 billion in 2025 revenue and OpenAI’s reported $13.1 billion.

The eye-popping valuations attached to these IPO candidates also reflect a broader trend of companies remaining private for longer, aided by abundant access to private capital markets.

Still, the prospect of several mega-sized technology listings arriving within months of each other has sparked concerns over whether public markets can absorb such enormous offerings without straining investor demand.

Cox, however, argued that fears about limited market capacity may be overstated.

“While there may be concerns about the capacity of the market to absorb a number of IPOs valued at several hundred billion dollars this year, they would slot into a US stock market worth about $70 trillion overall,” he wrote.

“That is five times larger in nominal terms than it was even at the peak of the dot-com bubble in the late 1990s. At that time, there was an average of almost 500 IPOs a year, compared with about 120 this decade.”

Deutsche Bank also warned that public investors may become far more demanding once these companies are forced to disclose detailed financial information on a regular basis.

“It has yet to be seen how public markets will value OpenAI and its peers once they open up their financial statements to scrutiny and explain the still little-understood economics of their business models,” Cox wrote.

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Shares of Qualcomm (QCOM) Incorporated surged 12% after Stellantis announced a major expansion of its multi-year technology partnership with the chipmaker.

The move will enhance Qualcomm’s role in next-generation connected and autonomous vehicles.

The expanded agreement will integrate Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Digital Chassis system-on-chips across Stellantis’ future vehicle lineup, covering cockpit systems, connectivity, and advanced driver assistance technologies.

The collaboration also includes Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Ride Pilot platform, which supports advanced safety systems and Level 2+ hands-free autonomous driving capabilities across millions of vehicles.

As part of the deal, Stellantis’ automated driving and simulation company, aiMotive, is also intended to join Qualcomm Technologies.

The announcement added to investor optimism around Qualcomm’s growing automotive business as the company continues diversifying beyond its traditional smartphone chip operations.

Automotive partnership boosts diversification strategy

The Stellantis expansion marks another step in Qualcomm’s effort to build out its automotive and artificial intelligence-related businesses.

Qualcomm’s automotive segment has already surpassed $5 billion in annual revenue, reflecting growing demand for connected vehicle technologies and software-defined automotive platforms.

Nakul Duggal, EVP and Group General Manager, Automotive, Industrial and Embedded IoT at Qualcomm Technologies, described the partnership expansion as “a meaningful inflection point for both companies.”

He added that the Snapdragon Digital Chassis platform enables scalable deployment of unified computing capabilities across multiple vehicle brands and models.

Investors have increasingly viewed Qualcomm’s automotive and AI initiatives as critical to reducing the company’s reliance on the cyclical smartphone market.

The Stellantis agreement was widely seen as a strong validation of that diversification strategy, particularly as automakers accelerate investments in advanced software, connectivity, and autonomous driving systems.

Qualcomm has also continued expanding into data center and physical AI infrastructure opportunities, with hyperscaler-related engagements expected to begin shipping later in 2026.

Analysts raise targets amid AI optimism

Melius Research, recently raised its price target on Qualcomm shares to $220 from $170 while maintaining a Hold rating.

The firm said it was becoming “incrementally good” about memory and AI semiconductor companies despite limited new developments emerging from recent US-China discussions.

Melius also raised long-term estimates and targets across several semiconductor companies tied to artificial intelligence infrastructure demand.

Separate reports also suggested AI chip startup Tenstorrent has attracted early acquisition interest from prospective buyers, including Intel and Qualcomm.

Broader enthusiasm around AI-related semiconductors has continued supporting sentiment across the chip sector.

Counterpoint Research recently estimated that smartphones capable of supporting agentic AI features represented roughly 4% of the market by the end of 2025 and could rise to 32% by 2027.

That projection suggests roughly one in three smartphones sold by 2027 may support advanced AI-driven features, potentially strengthening long-term demand for Qualcomm’s mobile processors.

Semiconductor sector remains supported by AI demand

The broader market environment also remained supportive for semiconductor stocks during Friday’s session.

The S&P 500 rose roughly 0.65%, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average gained about 0.81%.

The Nasdaq Composite added around 0.68%.

Shares of AI-related semiconductor companies have remained a major driver of broader market gains in recent months as investors continue rotating into companies tied to artificial intelligence infrastructure and computing demand.

For Qualcomm, investors appeared encouraged by the combination of growing automotive exposure, AI-related growth opportunities, and improving analyst sentiment.

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