Midday Market Movers

CNBC reported Wednesday that Wednesday’s session produced sharp swings across several sectors, with artificial intelligence infrastructure names and semiconductor stocks among the biggest midday movers.

Chip Stocks Resume Their Rally

Semiconductor shares bounced back broadly in afternoon trading. Micron Technology climbed roughly 3%, while the VanEck Semiconductor ETF gained more than 1%. On Semiconductor led the group with a 10% advance. Marvell Technology was not far behind, adding 7%, and Nvidia tacked on around 2%.

Akamai Technologies was another standout, rising nearly 7% after Bank of America upgraded the stock to a buy rating and lifted its price target to $175 from $130. Analysts at the bank argued the company had repositioned itself from a legacy content-delivery network into a credible artificial intelligence infrastructure platform, per CNBC.

Nebius and Alibaba Ride AI Wave

AI cloud company Nebius posted the most dramatic gain among midday movers, surging 16% after reporting first-quarter revenues of $399 million. That figure represented a 684% increase from the same period a year earlier, driven by demand for cloud and GPU capacity. Nebius also disclosed plans for a new AI factory in Pennsylvania, backed by up to 1.2 gigawatts of secured power and land.

Alibaba’s U.S.-listed shares climbed 6% after the Chinese technology group revealed that its cloud division recorded 38% first-quarter revenue growth year over year, alongside significant AI spending commitments.

Background: AI Infrastructure Demand Heats Up

The rally in AI-adjacent names follows months of intensifying competition among cloud providers for GPU capacity and data center power. Investors have closely watched spending commitments from both U.S. and Chinese technology groups as a signal of demand durability across the sector.

Also Read: What Rising AI Infrastructure Spend Means for Cloud Valuations

Earnings Misses Punish Resideo and Wix

Not all midday movers headed higher. Wix.com collapsed 30% after adjusted earnings of 68 cents per share fell far short of the $1.24 analyst consensus tracked by FactSet. Resideo Technologies dropped 17% after the home security company issued current-quarter earnings guidance well below Wall Street expectations. Conversely, Birkenstock slid more than 10% after missing both earnings and revenue estimates, with the company attributing part of the shortfall to geopolitical instability weighing on its Europe, Middle East and Africa business.

EchoStar bucked the negative trend, gaining 4% after regulators approved its $40 billion wireless spectrum sale to AT&T and SpaceX.

Read Next: AI Infrastructure Stocks to Watch as Cloud Spending Accelerates