US Stocks Close: Nasdaq Falls Over 1%, Philadelphia Semiconductor Index Rises Against Trend; US-Iran Talks Make Good Progress, While SpaceX Drops Over 16% in a Single Day

TradingKey - On June 22, ET, positive progress in U.S.-Iran negotiations boosted market sentiment, but a sharp drop in SpaceX weighed on the market. The three major U.S. stock indexes ended mixed, with the Nasdaq Composite falling more than 1%, while chip stocks bucked the trend to post gains.

At the close, the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 0.29% to 51,712.71; the Nasdaq Composite Index fell 1.32% to 26,166.60; and the S&P 500 Index slipped 0.37% to 7,472.79.

Tech stock performance

SpaceX (SPCX) fell over 16.43% to close at $154.60, on the verge of breaking below its debut price of $150.

SpaceX officially launched its inaugural investment-grade bond offering. According to the company's 8-K filing submitted on June 22, it has initiated the offering process for its first batch of senior unsecured notes, noting that the transaction is "subject to market conditions and other factors." The offering size is expected to reach at least $20 billion, with the proceeds raised to be used primarily to repay an equivalent temporary bridge loan.

Micron (MU) bucked the trend, rising 6.82% to close at $1,211.38, bringing its latest market capitalization to $1.37 trillion, putting it on the verge of overtaking Meta's market value.

Micron Technology and Anthropic announced a strategic cooperation agreement covering technology R&D, supply chain collaboration, enterprise applications, and capital investment. The two companies hope to leverage deeper synergies to drive optimizations in performance, energy efficiency, and cost structures for next-generation AI infrastructure. Under the agreement, Micron will provide Anthropic with support across its full suite of memory products, including high-bandwidth memory (HBM), DRAM, and data center SSDs. The two companies will also jointly conduct AI system architecture design and optimization.

Among mega-cap tech stocks, Tesla (TSLA) rose 1.14%, and TSMC (TSM) rose 1.20%; SpaceX fell 16.43%, Google (GOOGL) fell 5.02%, Amazon (AMZN) fell 4.75%, Broadcom (AVGO) fell 4.52%, Microsoft (MSFT) fell 3.18%, Meta Platforms (META) fell 2.32%, Nvidia (NVDA) fell 0.97%, and Apple (AAPL) fell 0.34%.

[Source: FutuBull]

The Philadelphia Semiconductor Index bucked the trend, rising 2.04% to close at 14,634.72 points. Among its 30 constituents, 22 advanced. Micron Technology (MU) rose 6.82%, Lam Research (LRCX) gained 5.27%, Intel (INTC) climbed 5.19%, Applied Materials (AMAT) advanced 3.74%, and KLA (KLAC) rose 3.70%.

Memory stocks extended their recent rally, with Micron Technology (MU) rising 6.82%, SanDisk (SNDK) gaining 4.07%, and Seagate Technology (STX) climbing 2.22%.

US-listed Chinese stocks fell across the board, with Pony.ai (PONY) falling 5.76%, Atour (ATAT) down 4.45%, Tencent Music (TME) dropping 4.12%, Chagee (CHA) losing 3.69%, MINISO (MNSO) down 3.39%, Hesai (HSAI) shedding 3.26%, and Li Auto (LI) sliding 2.95%.

Corporate News

Micron Signs Multi-Year Memory Supply Agreement with Anthropic

Micron Technology announced a strategic partnership with Anthropic, spanning AI memory and storage architecture design, supply-and-demand sourcing, and the company-wide deployment of the enterprise-grade Claude large language model across Micron. In addition, Micron is making a strategic investment in Anthropic's Series H funding round.

SpaceX Secures $6.3 Billion Long-Term Computing Power Contract

SpaceX has signed a long-term partnership agreement with open-source AI developer Reflection AI. Under the agreement, Reflection will access SpaceX's Colossus supercomputing cluster to tap into Nvidia's top-tier GB300 AI chips. The contract, running from July 2026 through 2029, is valued at approximately $6.3 billion with a monthly fee of $150 million.

As one of the world's leading gigawatt-scale AI computing clusters, Colossus originally served as the computing foundation for Elon Musk's Grok model. Following its record-breaking IPO, SpaceX has accelerated efforts to monetize its surplus computing capacity. It has previously secured multi-billion-dollar, long-term contracts from leading closed-source AI players such as Anthropic and Google, and is currently advancing its acquisition of code-generation AI tool Cursor. The addition of Reflection fills a gap in its open-source customer base, establishing a diversified client matrix of 'closed-source LLMs + developer tools + open-source AI labs.'

SpaceX Plans to Issue at Least $20 Billion in Investment-Grade Bonds

SpaceX has officially launched its debut investment-grade bond offering. According to an 8-K filing submitted on June 22, the company has initiated the sale of its first batch of senior unsecured notes, noting that the offering is 'subject to market conditions and other factors.' The issue size is expected to be at least $20 billion, with the proceeds primarily used to repay a temporary bridge loan of an equivalent amount.

Robinhood Plans to Issue $2 Billion in Convertible Bonds

Robinhood plans to raise $2 billion through a convertible bond offering, joining a growing list of companies capitalizing on the current convertible debt boom. The notes, maturing in 2029, will carry a zero-coupon rate, with the conversion premium set at a high range of 60% to 65%. The final pricing is expected to be determined after the market close on Monday. Regarding the use of proceeds, approximately $300 million will be allocated for common stock repurchases, with the remainder primarily used to fund capped call transactions and other related hedging instruments.

Meta to Invest $900 Million in Cred and Reshuffle WhatsApp Leadership

Meta plans to invest approximately $900 million in Indian fintech firm Cred for a roughly 20% stake, valuing the company at about $4.5 billion post-investment. As part of the transaction, Cred founder Kunal Shah will succeed Will Cathcart as the head of WhatsApp, while Cathcart will transition to a new AI-focused role within Meta.

Industry & Macro News

JPMorgan Expects AI Custom Chip Shipments to Overtake GPUs by 2027

JPMorgan stated that as major cloud computing companies and tech giants seek to reduce AI computing costs, improve energy efficiency, and escape their single-path dependency on general-purpose GPUs, the custom ASIC market is entering a new growth cycle, with Broadcom and Marvell poised to be the biggest beneficiaries of this trend.

The firm noted that unit shipments of AI ASICs/XPUs will surpass those of GPUs by 2027. JPMorgan expects total shipments of AI accelerators to reach 23.3 million units in 2027, with GPUs accounting for 10.9 million units (47%) and ASICs/XPUs accounting for 12.5 million units (53%). This implies that while GPUs will continue to grow, custom chips are likely to secure a larger share of newly deployed AI computing capacity.

Citi Expects Fed to Cut Rates by 25 Basis Points in October

Citi believes the Federal Reserve's next move will be a rate cut rather than a hike, with its baseline scenario calling for a 25-basis-point cut in October, followed by additional 25-basis-point cuts in December and January 2027. The firm contends that falling oil prices are mitigating upside inflation risks, rising jobless claims signal seasonal weakness in the labor market, and the strength in core PCE is driven by rising stock prices—making it an "outlier" among inflation metrics that does not reflect broad consumer price pressures.

Nearly $130 Billion in U.S. Data Center Projects Stalled in Q1

The pace of U.S. data center construction slowed significantly in the first quarter of 2026, with some projects even grinding to a halt. According to a research report from Data Center Watch, the total value of blocked or delayed data center projects across the U.S. reached approximately $130 billion in the first quarter of this year.

U.S. Vice President Vance Says U.S.-Iran Talks Making Good Progress

U.S. Vice President Vance stated that negotiations between the U.S. and Iran are progressing well. Iran has formally agreed to allow International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors back into the country to conduct their work. He framed the decision as a critical milestone in the process: "This is an important milestone for the American people and the first step toward the permanent denuclearization of Iran or permanently ending Iran's nuclear weapons program."

U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent stated that, as a supporting measure under this agreement framework, the Treasury Department has issued a 60-day temporary general license. This license temporarily lifts restrictions on the production, transportation, and sale of Iranian oil, paving the way for subsequent negotiations toward a final agreement.