Good morning! It’s Thursday, and the S&P 500 is just shy of a record high. Today we’re covering how Big Tech’s getting a boost from Project Stargate, an update from anti-woke Wall Street activists, and more. First time reading? Join 190,000 self-directed investors gaining an edge every morning. Sign up here. 

The AI trade accelerates

Three days into his new term, Donald Trump is living up to his reputation as the guy who makes everyone rich. 

Putting aside his vexing meme-coin launch before his inauguration, the president’s new artificial intelligence initiative, Project Stargate, has made waves across financial markets.

Announced Tuesday, the move captures a four-year, $500 billion investment from OpenAI, Oracle, SoftBank and MGX, a firm tied to the sovereign wealth fund of the UAE.

“We’re starting off with tremendous investment coming into our country at levels that nobody’s really ever seen before,” Trump said at a White House press conference.

To be fair, Trump has previously characterized AI as both a risk and as “the oil of the future.” He’s since signaled that he intends to do whatever possible to make the US the leading nation in AI. 

In any case, tech stocks subsequently rallied and the S&P 500 touched an intraday high on Wednesday.

Data center and computer-related stocks were among the notable standouts:

• Arm Holdings, +15.93%

• SoftBank, +10.97%

• Monolithic Power Systems, +7.98%

• Oracle, +6.75%

• Nvidia, +4.43%

• Microsoft, +4.13%

• Vertiv, +3.81%

• Dell Technologies, +3.61%

“Project Stargate is providing the lift to a wide range of tech stocks,” said Interactive Brokers’ chief strategist, Steve Sosnick. 

In total, the S&P 500’s Information Technology sector closed 2.49 percent higher the day after the announcement, outpacing the broader index’s 0.61 percent climb. 

That said, the benchmark index still maintains a slight edge so far in 2025. 

Tech momentum held through the doubts cast by Elon Musk, when he wrote on X that Softbank, OpenAI, and Oracle together did not have the sufficient funding. 

“SoftBank has well under $10B secured,” wrote Musk, who helms the White House’s government efficiency agency, dubbed DOGE. “I have that on good authority.”

OpenAI’s Sam Altman replied directly to the post, saying it was incorrect.

The interaction didn’t spook Wall Street. While the scope and the details of the Project Stargate remain murky, investors seem to believe it’s at least directionally correct. 

“The promise of a huge pool of money funding AI investment,” Sosnick said, “whether fully funded or not, is enough to have investors enthusiastic once again about artificial intelligence and almost anything related to it.”

Comments or feedback? Reply directly to this email or let me know on X @philrosenn.

Elsewhere:

💰️Anti-woke shareholders are taking on banks. Right-leaning activist groups are privately pushing Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan to abandon or shrink their diversity and equity programs. Meanwhile, Citi and Bank of America have come under pressure for discriminating customers based on political beliefs. (WSJ)

📊 Solana and XRP ETFs could be coming soon. Rumors are swirling that the two cryptocurrencies could get their own Wall Street-ready products after a screenshot of a reported filing suggested futures contracts for both could start trading February 10. The two tokens spiked after the post gained traction on X. (CoinDesk)

Rapid-fire:

• Elon Musk’s DOGE is weighing whether to get rid of pennies, which are expensive to create (Business Insider)

• President Trump threatened Russia with sanctions and tariffs if Putin doesn’t end the Ukraine war (CNBC)

• Top execs across Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, Bridgewater, and BlackRock are all embracing bitcoin (Pomp Letter)

• Federal employees are anxious, confused and uncertain now that the White House has ordered them back to work in person everyday (WSJ)

• LinkedIn has been sued by customers who said the platform disclosed private messages to third parties without permission, in a bid to train AI (Reuters)

• Google agreed to invest a fresh $1 billion into the AI startup Anthropic (CNBC)

• Netflix stock rallied more than 9% and closed at a record high following its blowout earnings (Yahoo Finance)

• CNN is planning to layoff hundreds of employees this week (CNBC)

Traders see 20% odds that a recession strikes in 2025, according to Kalshi, the biggest US prediction market:

Last thing:

Interested in advertising in Opening Bell Daily? Email [email protected]