Shares of technology companies were more or less flat as traders awaited developments in the war in Iran.
The slide in oil futures initially buoyed risky sectors such as technology. But oil pared gains in late trading, and investors grew risk-averse again.
A spike in energy costs could tie the Federal Reserve's hands and increase borrowing costs for tech companies, many of whom are on a credit binge to fuel artificial-intelligence infrastructure spending.
Oracle shares surged in late trading as the company said demand for AI training has bolstered its cloud-computing revenue, which looks set to continue growing rapidly through 2027. Oracle's report allayed fears about its spending on AI infrastructure.
Meta Platforms entered talks to acquire Moltbook, a social networking platform for artificial intelligence agents. The tech giant said the Moltbook team would join its Superintelligence Labs division, known as MSL, which has become a primary focus of the Facebook owner's growth plans.
Separately, Advanced Machine Intelligence, the startup co-founded by Meta's former chief AI scientist Yann LeCun, said it raised $1.03 billion in a seed funding round as it seeks to develop a new breed of AI systems.
Meanwhile, Amazon is preparing one of the largest corporate bond offerings in history to fund its AI buildout, which will soak up the majority of its $200 billion 2026 capital-expenditure budget.
Write to Rob Curran at rob.curran@dowjones.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
03-10-26 1809ET
