Global stock markets rise as investors continue to bet on AI

Global stock markets have climbed as investors continue to bet on bright prospects for the tech giants driving the AI boom.

In the United States, all three major stock indexes rose on Tuesday, led by the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite, which gained 1.18 percent.

The benchmark S&P 500 rose 0.6 percent, while the narrower Dow Jones Industrial Average edged up 0.03 percent.

Five of the “Magnificent Seven” tech stocks rose, led by Tesla, up 4.04 percent.

Amazon gained 1.61 percent, while Apple and Alphabet gained 0.93 percent and 0.9 percent, respectively.

Nvidia, the world’s most valuable public company, rose almost 1 percent after announcing a $3bn investment in Meta’s equity offering.

Meta fell 1.64 percent, while Microsoft fell 0.24 percent.

Other big movers in tech included Advanced Micro Devices, Broadcom and Intel, which gained 5.45 percent, 4 percent and 3.61 percent, respectively.

Gains continued in the Asia Pacific on Wednesday, with stock markets in Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and Australia climbing.

The KOSPI in Seoul led the gains, with the benchmark index up 5.84 percent as of 03:00 GMT.

The surge came as South Korea’s SK Hynix, one of the world’s top three memory chip makers, announced blockbuster third-quarter results on Wednesday, with operating profit soaring about 630 percent year-on-year to 83.33 trillion won ($62.8bn).

SK Hynix shares listed in South Korea surged more than 8 percent following the results.

In Tokyo, the benchmark Nikkei 225 was up 1.26 percent, while the TAIEX in Taipei was up 1.32 percent.

The S&P/ASX 200 in Sydney was up 0.11 percent.

Investors are keenly anticipating upcoming earnings reports from major tech players as they try to gauge whether their massive investments in AI will pay dividends.

Microsoft and Alphabet report their latest results on Wednesday, followed by Amazon on Thursday and Apple on Monday.

On Monday, AI giant Anthropic filed paperwork for its hotly anticipated IPO, reporting a net loss of $80.7bn in the first half of 2026 on $16.3bn in revenue.

Tech firms have poured hundreds of billions of dollars each into AI infrastructure, fuelling debate over whether a speculative market bubble could be forming similar to the one that preceded the 2000 dot-com crash.

Global AI investment is forecast to hit $2.7 trillion in 2026 and $3.6 trillion in 2027, according to Gartner, a technology insights company.

Oil prices, which have been elevated since the start of the US-Israel war on Iran, rose about 1 percent as Asian markets opened on Wednesday amid the ongoing conflict in the Middle East, including hostilities between Saudi Arabia and Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthis.

Futures for Brent crude, the global benchmark, stood at about $115 a barrel, up 59 percent from before the war began.