Wall Street Buys the AI Trade Back: CoreWeave's 25% Jump Lifts the S&P 500 to 7,619 — and Texas's Data-Center Bet With It
Five days after an AI sell-off knocked 4.4% off the S&P 500, one earnings report reversed the argument. CoreWeave, the AI cloud company at the heart of the buildout, leaped 24.7% on a smaller-than-expected loss and a raised outlook, pulling chipmakers and data-center suppliers up with it — the trade that runs straight through Texas's fastest-growing industry.
NEW YORK — The artificial intelligence trade came back on Wednesday, and it came back on a single report card. The S&P 500 rose 98.45 points, or 1.31%, to 7,619.38, the Nasdaq Composite rallied 400.31 points, or 1.60%, to 25,466.19, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average added 254.60 points, or 0.49%, to 52,486.49, according to the Associated Press close report cited by Market Briefer's Global Close. The S&P's close put it within 2.6% of its all-time closing high of 7,819.04, set October 6 — most of last week's sell-off, retraced in four sessions.
The engine was CoreWeave, which rents access to AI chips over the cloud. The company leaped 24.7% after reporting quarterly revenue of about $3.66 billion — ahead of the roughly $3.56 billion consensus — a smaller loss than analysts expected, and a raised 2026 revenue outlook of $13.0 billion to $13.3 billion. Chief executive Michael Intrator said the company has roughly $9 billion in customer prepayments and deposits expected over the next three months, an answer aimed at the concern that has dogged the stock: how a debt-funded expansion gets paid for if demand cools. Chipmakers followed: Micron Technology rallied 11.9%, Broadcom rose 4%, and Nvidia climbed 2.9% to $173.73 after two straight days of sharp losses.
For Texas, this is not a distant ticker story. The buildout those companies supply — data centers, power, cooling and the construction crews that raise them — is one of the state's fastest-growing industries, and this desk covered the other side of Wednesday's move on November 6, when the S&P 500 fell 4.4% in an AI sell-off and Texas data-center plans took the mood with it. A fear gauge tells the round trip: the CBOE Volatility Index fell about 10% to 17.49, its fourth straight decline, after touching a more-than-seven-month high of 28.36 during last week's sell-off.
The rally ran with one hand tied. The U.S. bond market was closed for Veterans Day, so stocks moved without a fresh Treasury verdict on the day's other argument — October consumer prices, up 0.4% with core prices up 0.3%, strong enough for traders to price a Federal Reserve rate hike in December. Nine of the S&P 500's eleven sectors rose anyway. Whether the rebound is a repricing of AI earnings power or a one-day move in a closed bond market gets its first real test Thursday, when cash trading in Treasuries resumes.
