US Stocks Rise as Fed Rate Hike Materializes, Nasdaq Gains 1.7%; Tech and Memory Stocks Lead AI-Related Gains; Micron Up 5%

TradingKey - The Fed's rate hike materialized, while falling U.S. Treasury yields and oil prices both supported market trading sentiment. U.S. stocks rose, with AI-related stocks such as technology and memory shares leading the gains.

At the close, the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 0.61% to 51,778.04 points; the Nasdaq Composite Index climbed 1.69% to 26,418.30 points; and the S&P 500 Index gained 1.14% to 7,637.76 points.

Tech Stock Performance

Intel (INTC) rose 7.67% to $108.8.

Lip-Bu Tan stated that with the rapid expansion of AI agent deployments, CPU demand has far exceeded Intel's current supply capabilities, currently meeting only about 50% of the demand from frontier customers. He noted that CEOs from several major tech companies have called him directly to request more CPU shipments, saying, "I have to apologize because our capacity cannot keep up."

Micron (MU) rose 5.5% to $977.5.

Citi noted in its latest research report that as AI transitions from mere training and inference phases into an era of "continuous learning," demand for HBM, server DDR5, and enterprise solid-state drives (eSSDs) will experience explosive growth simultaneously starting in 2027. Amid rapidly surging demand, the supply side is constrained by HBM capacity allocation and a slowdown in technology migration, leaving capacity expansion pacing far behind demand. Consequently, Citi forecasts that global memory capital expenditures will jump 46.5% year-over-year to $80.4 billion in 2027, but due to long lead times for capacity buildout, even large-scale investment will struggle to fill the supply-demand gap.

Among large-cap tech stocks, TSMC (TSM) rose 3.00%, SpaceX (SPCX) gained 2.60%, Nvidia (NVDA) climbed 2.54%, Broadcom (AVGO) advanced 2.29%, Tesla (TSLA) added 2.27%, Amazon (AMZN) rose 2.13%, Microsoft (MSFT) gained 1.50%, Apple (AAPL) rose 1.38%, Meta Platforms (META) advanced 1.34%, and Google (GOOGL) climbed 1.30%.

[Source: FutuBull]

The Philadelphia Semiconductor Index rose 3.14% to 11,599.49 points. Among its 30 constituents, 29 advanced and 1 declined.

Among memory stocks, SanDisk (SNDK) rose 6.21%, Micron Technology (MU) gained 5.50%, SK Hynix (SKHY) advanced 4.64%, Seagate Technology (STX) added 2.55%, and Western Digital (WDC) climbed 1.65%.

Among chip stocks, Arm Holdings (ARM) rose 8.57%, Intel (INTC) gained 7.67%, AMD (AMD) advanced 6.36%, Nvidia (NVDA) climbed 2.54%, and Qualcomm (QCOM) added 2.09%.

Company News

Jensen Huang expects Nvidia chip sales to double by 2027

Speaking during an AI executive summit in Scotland, Jensen Huang stated that the company expects chip sales in 2027 to reach double those of 2026. Public reports have not yet disclosed the baseline sales figures, specific product scope, or calculation methodology. Nvidia currently primarily sells the Blackwell and Blackwell Ultra platforms, with its next-generation Vera Rubin already entering full production. At the GTC conference in March this year, Huang projected that cumulative revenue from AI chips such as Blackwell and Rubin would reach at least $1 trillion by 2027.

Marvell, Microsoft, and Utimaco launch cloud-native payment security platform

Marvell, Microsoft, and German cybersecurity vendor Utimaco announced on Wednesday the joint launch of the Azure Payment HSM v2 payment security platform, offering cloud-native payment security services to banks, payment processors, and financial institutions. The platform integrates capabilities from all three parties into a managed service: Marvell provides LiquidSecurity hardware security modules (HSMs) responsible for hardware-level key protection and transaction throughput; Utimaco provides Atalla payment module software, supporting card issuance, PIN translation, mobile payments, and key management; while Microsoft Azure serves as the delivery platform, offering the complete solution as a fully managed service. The three companies stated that this is the industry's first payment security solution to integrate multi-vendor HSM hardware and software infrastructure into a managed service.

Nebius announces comprehensive price hikes for its GPU cloud services, with an average increase of about 20%

Nebius announced that it will comprehensively raise prices for its GPU cloud services starting October 1, with an average increase of about 20%. This round of price increases covers multiple chip models including the H100, H200, B200, and B300, marking Nebius's second price hike since May this year. According to pricing screenshots circulating on platform X, this price adjustment is significant. The price per GPU hour for the H100 rose from $3.85 to $4.50, an increase of about 16.9%; the H200 increased from $4.50 to $5.40, a 20% increase; the B200 rose from $7.15 to $8.50, an increase of about 18.9%; and the B300 rose from $7.85 to $9.50, an increase of about 21%.

Industry & Macro News

Trump Says Iran War Reaches Critical Moment, Will Decide Whether to Resume Large-Scale Strikes

U.S. President Donald Trump said that the Iran war is approaching a critical moment and that he is about to decide whether to resume large-scale military operations. In an interview with Axios, Trump said: "I have a big decision to make: whether to go in and destroy them (the Iranian regime) or not. It's a big decision, and anything could happen." Trump said he plans to meet with leaders of Gulf nations, including Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, and Oman, during the UN General Assembly to hear their views on the next phase of the war. U.S. officials said Trump and Defense Secretary Hegseth have ordered current military deployments in the Middle East to be maintained in response to a potential escalation in the situation. Trump also noted that Iran remains in direct contact with the U.S. and hopes to reach a deal.

U.S. Approves Iranian President and Foreign Minister to Travel to New York for UN General Assembly

According to the Associated Press, the U.S. State Department confirmed that it has approved senior officials, including Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian and Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, to travel to New York for next week's high-level meetings at the UN General Assembly. The State Department stated that Iran's "core delegation" and essential staff will be permitted to attend UNGA events, but will be subject to travel restrictions and prohibited from purchasing luxury goods and other restricted items under U.S. policy. U.S. officials said the Iranian delegation is smaller than last year's. The decision comes against the backdrop of the conflict between the U.S. and Iran lasting for more than six months. Currently, neither side has made significant progress toward reopening the Strait of Hormuz or resuming Iranian nuclear talks.