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Wall Street's weeks-long AI rally hit a wall Friday as the 10-year Treasury yield jumped 14 basis points to 4.6%, the highest in a year, while oil surged past $109 on Strait of Hormuz tensions. The Nasdaq and S&P 500 each fell over 1%, the Dow dropped more than 500 points, and investors rushed out of tech en masse. Nvidia fell 4.4%, Intel dropped 6%, and AMD shed 4% in the broad risk-off move.
Semiconductor stocks took an extra leg down Friday after President Trump's two-day Beijing summit with Xi Jinping wrapped up without a breakthrough on chip exports. Despite Washington authorizing Nvidia's H200 sales to China, Beijing hasn't formally approved shipments and Chinese companies have placed zero orders. Nvidia lost 3% in pre-market alone; SK Hynix fell 7.7% in Asia.
In back-to-back moves Thursday and Friday, UBS analyst Timothy Arcuri and TD Cowen analyst Joshua Buchalter each lifted their Nvidia targets to $275, implying ~22% upside. Both cite strong hyperscaler capex expansion and insatiable demand for Blackwell and Rubin-generation GPUs. The raises land just days before Nvidia's fiscal Q1 2027 earnings report on May 20.
Published Friday during the selloff, Goldman analyst James Schneider reiterated a Buy rating with a $250 target and boosted calendar-year 2026 and 2027 EPS estimates 14% and 34% above consensus, respectively. Goldman sees a steady pipeline of Blackwell catalysts and believes the stock is meaningfully undervalued heading into Tuesday's report, where the Street expects $78B in revenue.
Citi raised Dell to $290 from $235 and Mizuho to a new Street-high $300 from $260, both citing neocloud, sovereign AI, and agentic workload demand. Dell booked $64B in AI server orders in FY26, entered FY27 with a $43B backlog, and guides FY27 AI-optimized server revenue to ~$50B — up 103% YoY. The stock is emerging as a top infrastructure play outside the chip names.
A Motley Fool analysis published Thursday highlighted that both Alphabet and Meta spent exactly zero on share repurchases in Q1 2026, after buying back $15.1B and $12.8B respectively in Q1 2025. The capital is being redirected to AI infrastructure: Alphabet raised 2026 capex guidance to $180-190B, Meta to $125-145B. Combined hyperscaler capex is on track to exceed $650B this year.
HSBC upgraded Cisco to Buy from Hold and hiked its price target to $137 from $77, implying ~19% upside, following Cisco's blowout fiscal Q3 earnings. Morgan Stanley also raised its target to $120. Both firms see Cisco as a key beneficiary of AI data center networking buildout, with the stock already surging double digits on the earnings beat.
Multiple law firms are reminding SMCI investors of the May 26 lead-plaintiff deadline in the securities fraud class action tied to the DOJ's export-control indictment of co-founder Yih-Shyan Liaw. The stock has cratered 33% since the March disclosure of $2.5B in allegedly illegal server shipments to China. JPMorgan cut its price target to $28 from $40 with a Neutral rating.
Palantir reported Q1 revenue of $1.63B (up 85% YoY) and EPS of $0.33, beating estimates by 22%. The company raised full-year guidance to $7.65-7.66B. Yet the stock fell 5.7% after hours and is down 18% YTD as the market questions whether even triple-digit growth justifies a PE above 100x. U.S. commercial revenue surged 133% to $595M.
IonQ reported record Q1 revenue of $64.7M, up 755% YoY, beating the midpoint of guidance by 30%. The quantum computing company raised full-year revenue expectations to $260-270M, sold its first 256-qubit system, and grew remaining performance obligations 554% to $470M. About 60% of revenue came from commercial customers, with 35% international.