-- Tech stocks were higher late Wednesday afternoon, with the State Street Technology Select Sector SPDR ETF (XLK) rising 2.8% and the State Street SPDR S&P Semiconductor ETF (XSD) climbing 5.2%.
The Philadelphia Semiconductor index gained 6%.
In corporate news, Firefly Aerospace (FLY) and Nvidia (NVDA) said Wednesday they collaborated to enable rapid on-orbit data analysis for a lunar imaging service using a specialized computing module. Nvidia shares rose 2.1%, and Firefly added 6.6%.
Meta Platforms (META) shares jumped 6.4% after it launched Muse Spark, a new multimodal reasoning model and the first in its Muse family, as the company steps up efforts to build what it calls "personal superintelligence."
Micron Technology (MU) and Sandisk (SNDK) shares gained after fellow memory chipmaker Samsung Electronics projected increased Q1 sales and profits. Micron shares rose 7.3%, and Sandisk climbed about 9%.
Elon Musk on Tuesday amended his lawsuit against Microsoft-backed (MSFT) OpenAI to request that any damages awarded be directed to the organization's charitable arm rather than to himself, as the high-profile case heads toward trial later this month in Oakland, California, The Wall Street Journal reported. Musk is seeking more than $150 billion in damages from OpenAI and its partner Microsoft, alleging the company departed from its original nonprofit mission and misled him as an early donor while shifting toward a for-profit structure. Microsoft shares were fractionally lower.