The stock week of the observed AI companies was divided. Nvidia recovered from a stock slump on Monday and ended the week up 6.8 percent at $232.24, buoyed by the acquisition of open-source provider Hugging Face finalized on Friday. On Friday itself, a group of highly valued tech stocks – Tesla, Apple, Palantir – came under pressure, while chip stocks like ASML, Arm and AMD withstood the same headwind.
Nvidia: From Slump to Recovery
Nvidia: +6.8% to $232.24
The week began for Nvidia with a setback: on Monday, the chip company invested $3.5 billion in convertible bonds of partner MediaTek – a bond investors can later exchange for shares. Nvidia stock closed nearly five percent lower at $217.55, as investors again feared circular financing structures in the AI industry, according to Bloomberg. The stock turned around over the course of the week: on Friday, Nvidia sealed the purchase of Hugging Face for $12.93 billion, after reports had put the price at around $14 billion in between. The same day, it emerged that Nvidia’s equity portfolio in other companies had grown to $99 billion within twelve months. The stock now trades just below its 52-week high of $235.74.
Growth Stocks Come Under Pressure on Friday
Tesla: -6.2% to $353.08
Tesla lost about six percent on Friday. The trigger, according to 24/7 Wall St., was a surprisingly strong US jobs report for August, which pushed the odds of a rate hike at the Federal Reserve’s September 16 meeting above 60 percent – an environment that weighs especially hard on richly valued growth stocks. For Tesla, according to Forbes, investors also took profits ahead of this week’s planned robotaxi launch of the Cybercab in Austin; more than three of every ten dollars of Tesla’s valuation reportedly now hinge on the robotaxi business, which so far makes up less than half a percent of company revenue.
Apple: -2.9% to $318.68
Apple fell Friday in the wake of the same rate scare. There is no separate, dated reason specific to Apple stock that day – the shares simply moved in step with the broader market, without an identifiable company-specific trigger.
Palantir: -3.6% to $176.05
Palantir also extended a slide on Friday that, according to Motley Fool, had already begun on Tuesday: the stock pulled back sharply after a rally that had briefly pushed it to 144 times expected annual earnings – even a new US Army contract under the Titan program did not stop investors from taking profits.
Chip Suppliers Shrug Off the Rate Scare
ASML: +3.9% to $1,709.81
While Tesla, Apple and Palantir declined, chip stocks rose Friday. ASML gained almost four percent after several investment banks – including UBS, Citi, Deutsche Bank and RBC – reportedly raised their price targets on robust demand for EUV lithography systems used in AI chips, as Leverage Shares reports. Arm (+3.8% to $251.81), AMD (+3.0% to $469.94) and Taiwanese contract manufacturer TSMC (+2.2% to $426.25) rose as well. The SOXX semiconductor index – a stock-market barometer for chip stocks – reportedly outpaced the broader Nasdaq by about three percentage points on Friday, according to 24/7 Wall St., supported by continued confidence in AI chip demand despite rising rate concerns.
German and European stocks in the Beckmann catalog barely moved this week: SAP last traded at $215.67 (-0.6%), while Siemens, Siemens Energy, Infineon, Aixtron and Süss MicroTec showed no notable swings by week’s end – a calm patch against the volatility in large US stocks.
For the bigger picture, the week marks a shift: it is no longer just AI investment deals like Nvidia’s moving prices, but increasingly the Federal Reserve’s rate expectations, which are hitting richly valued growth stocks and chip stocks differently. Next week, Nvidia and MediaTek are set to close their convertible bond (September 8), and on September 16 the Fed decides on interest rates.
This overview is journalistic reporting, not investment advice.
