U.S. stocks finished Friday higher as another burst of AI enthusiasm outweighed the pressure from long-term Treasury yields still sitting above 5%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 0.93%
U.S. stocks finished Friday higher as another burst of AI enthusiasm outweighed the pressure from long-term Treasury yields still sitting above 5%.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 0.93% to 51,828.62, while the S&P 500 gained 0.51% to 7,743.41 and the Nasdaq Composite added about 0.48%.
The clearest stock-specific move came from Akamai.
Akamai announced an official $11.6 billion, seven-year agreement with Anthropic, focused on supplying CPU compute capacity through Akamai Cloud. The deal can expand by another $9 billion, potentially taking the total commitment close to $20 billion.
Akamai shares jumped more than 20% after the announcement.
Akamai Is Turning Into an AI Infrastructure StockThe Anthropic deal changes how investors can think about Akamai.
The company is still known for content delivery and cybersecurity, but Anthropic is committing billions of dollars to Akamai’s distributed cloud infrastructure for AI workloads.
Anthropic also received warrants that could eventually convert into as much as 5% of Akamai’s common stock, depending on how the relationship expands.
That puts Akamai directly into the same AI infrastructure trade that has been driving huge financing commitments across cloud and data-center companies.
Coinpaper recently reported how AI stocks were already holding up despite 5.2% Treasury yields, and Akamai’s move reinforces that split.
Marvell Keeps Riding the AI Data-Center TradeMarvell also ended Friday higher, gaining 1.15% to $261.94.
The move looks modest beside Akamai, but Marvell has already been one of the stronger AI infrastructure stocks this month. Shares have climbed from roughly $207 at the start of September to more than $260, helped by demand for networking, optical interconnects and custom silicon used inside data centers.
The company recently reported record quarterly revenue of $2.74 billion, up 37% year over year, with data-center demand remaining the central growth driver.
That is why Marvell is increasingly trading as an AI infrastructure name rather than simply a diversified semiconductor company.
Our Nasdaq-versus-Dow analysis already showed investors concentrating capital in companies expected to capture AI spending even while rate-sensitive parts of the market struggle.
