The US stock market ticked higher on Wednesday, led by its most influential stock, Nvidia, which lifted the S&P 500 0.6 percent, pulling it a bit closer to its all-time high set late last month.

Nvidia helped boost the market and climbed 1.6 percent after Meta Platforms announced a long-term partnership where it will use millions of chips and other equipment from Nvidia for its artificial-intelligence data centres.

“No one deploys AI at Meta’s scale,” Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said. Because his company is the most valuable on Wall Street, Nvidia's stock was the single most powerful force pulling the S&P 500 higher.

That performance demonstrated the upside of AI development for the U.S stock market. But investors have also focused on the potential downsides recently, which has led to sharp swings for Wall Street.

Worries are rising, for example, about how much companies like Meta are spending on AI and whether they can make back their huge investments through higher profits and productivity in the future.

Meta’s stock fell as much as 1.7 percent before recovering and rising 0.6 percent.

Another worry is that if AI succeeds in creating tools to do complicated tasks more cheaply, companies in industries as far flung as software and legal services and trucking logistics could see their businesses get undercut.

That has pushed investors to suddenly and aggressively punish stocks of companies seen as under threat, and analysts have likened it to a “shoot first-ask questions later” mentality.

Several profit reports from companies helped to lift stocks on Wednesday. They continued what's been a strong reporting season for the big US companies in the S&P 500.

The S&P 500 rose 0.6 percent, to 6,881, the Dow rose 0.3 percent, to 49,662, while the Nasdaq rose 0.8 percent, to 22,753. (AP)



Edited by Cecil Wong