The FOMC voted unanimously for a quarter-point hike Wednesday, lifting the target range to 3.75%-4%, with the dot plot penciling in one more hike before year-end. Chair Kevin Warsh's hawkish press conference on sticky inflation flipped a green session red — the Dow fell 631.21 points, or 1.21%, to 51,461.90, the S&P 500 dropped 0.45% to 7,551.81, and the Nasdaq Composite closed essentially flat at 25,978.42, down 0.01%. Long-duration AI names held up better than the broad tape, but "higher for longer" is now the base case.
Reuters reported Tuesday that SK Hynix is exploring leasing part of Intel's New Albany, Ohio fab — or forming a JV with Intel and cloud providers — which would be the first time the Korean memory giant produces chips on US soil. Intel and SK Hynix shares each rose about 3% on the report, with INTC adding another ~3.24% Wednesday. Analysts piled on: Tigress lifted its target from $118 to $145, Northland upgraded to Outperform at $120, and Melius reiterated Buy at $165 — well above the ~$112 street median. Talks are early and no memory type has been decided.
Bloomberg reports OpenAI is in early talks with investors on a round valuing the company north of $1.2 trillion, up from the $852 billion mark set in March after a $122 billion raise backed by Amazon, Nvidia and SoftBank. The talks were investor-initiated and haven't progressed far; the figure may not hold. Notably, an IPO now looks pushed to 2027, which keeps the AI-exposure trade concentrated in the public names.
Z.AI and MiniMax have each plunged more than 30% in September, erasing roughly $33 billion in combined market value on competition and cash-burn worries. The overhang got worse as Anthropic and other US developers pressed policymakers to restrict Chinese access, alleging DeepSeek, Moonshot, MiniMax and Alibaba distilled American frontier models — claims backed by a joint FBI/NSA/CISA advisory. Beijing's Commerce Ministry called the accusations groundless and accused Washington of pursuing an AI monopoly.
NHTSA escalated audit query AQ26002 with a Special Order demanding Tesla answer 21 questions, under oath, on how it self-certified a vehicle with no steering wheel, pedals, or mirrors against federal motor vehicle safety standards. The deadline is September 30, and incomplete or untruthful answers carry civil penalties up to $139.35 million. The probe opened after Tesla began commercial Cybercab service in Austin on September 3.
UBS analyst Karl Keirstead reiterated Buy and raised his Palantir target from $220 to $250 after the AIPCon customer event — about 44% upside from the roughly $173 close. The call leans on "AI sovereignty" demand, $3.4 billion in Q2 bookings, and 157% net dollar retention. UBS argues Palantir now screens cheap relative to AI software peers, which is a notably different bull case than the momentum story earlier in the year.
AMD closed at $504.20 Tuesday, up 2.19%, then traded up to about $512.50 intraday Wednesday, a gain of roughly 1.65%, as buyers rotated back into semis ahead of the Fed. The bull case rests on Data Center revenue of $6.7 billion, up 107% year over year, supporting a Buy rating and a $628 target implying about 35% upside. AMD has been one of the steadier AI names through the recent chip-sentiment chop.
Nvidia announced Wednesday an AI Energy Management initiative alongside Emerald AI and Google, aimed at grid-aware datacenter power — a direct response to the biggest physical constraint on the buildout. That lands on top of the $12.9 billion Hugging Face acquisition, Nvidia's second-largest ever behind December's $20 billion Groq asset purchase, bringing 18 million developers and 3 million hosted models into the ecosystem. Shares sit around $213, a roughly $5.26 trillion market cap at about 26.8 times earnings.
BakerAvenue's King Lip named Broadcom his top pick for the next leg of AI spending, arguing custom silicon wins as workloads shift from model training to running inference at scale. The numbers back the setup: fiscal Q3 revenue of $29.59 billion, up 85.5%, with AI semiconductor revenue of $16.7 billion, up 221% year over year and now 56% of total. Management has guided to roughly $58 billion in fiscal 2026 AI revenue, $115 billion in 2027, and $230 billion in 2028.
Oracle is trading near $144.56 after a rough stretch, including a 4.8% drop Monday on macro rather than company news. Fiscal Q1 revenue grew 30% with cloud up 62% and OCI up 121%, and the remaining performance obligation backlog stands at $664 billion — but total debt has reached about $125 billion, and rising rates make that math harder. Larry Ellison also scrapped a planned $7.5 billion share sale on September 11.
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