Tech-Led Nasdaq Reaches Record High as AI Optimism Overshadows Geopolitical Headwinds

Investors look past AI safety debates and the Middle East conflict to push markets to a fresh milestone.

Published On 23 Sep 202623 Sep 2026

Wall Street’s Nasdaq stock exchange surged to an all-time high on Tuesday, brushing aside lingering concerns over artificial intelligence safety risks, elevated technology valuations, and the energy disruption triggered by the United States’ ongoing conflict with Iran.

The Nasdaq Composite index, heavily weighted toward technology giants such as Nvidia, Apple, and Microsoft, advanced 0.45 percent, bringing its year-to-date gains to more than 17 percent.

The Nasdaq 100, a narrower measure tracking the 100 largest non-financial companies on the exchange, jumped 0.82 percent. Meanwhile, the S&P 500, the broadest gauge of the US stock market, closed essentially unchanged.

Monolithic Power Systems, a Florida-based power circuit manufacturer, and Canadian e-commerce platform Shopify led the rally, climbing 8.1 percent and 7.1 percent, respectively. Micron Technology, one of the world’s top three memory chip makers alongside South Korea’s SK Hynix and Samsung Electronics, rose 5 percent.

Chip heavyweight Nvidia, the world’s most valuable company, added 0.7 percent, while Apple edged up 0.2 percent. Meta Platforms, which had surged 11.4 percent on Monday amid enthusiasm for its new AI assistant Muse, gave back 0.63 percent.

Major Asian markets opened higher on Wednesday, with Japan’s Nikkei 225 and South Korea’s Kospi rising roughly 1.4 percent and 0.1 percent, respectively, during morning trading. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index, however, opened lower, shedding more than 0.7 percent.

Oil prices remained largely steady on Tuesday, a day after dropping more than 3 percent on improved fuel flows from the Gulf and renewed diplomatic optimism between Washington and Tehran.

Futures for Brent crude, the international benchmark, were trading at $99.18 a barrel as of 01:00 GMT.

US President Donald Trump told reporters on Tuesday that American officials held a “very good” meeting with their Iranian counterparts on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in New York, hours after using his address to the assembly to warn that he could “annihilate” Iran if Tehran refused to agree to a deal on the war.

Trump, whose conflict with Iran is approaching the seven-month mark, said US and Iranian officials would hold another round of talks in the “very near future.”

Jay Goldberg, a senior analyst at Seaport Research Partners in San Francisco, said signs of diplomatic progress between the US and Iran had refocused investor attention on AI’s profit-generating potential after years of multibillion-dollar investment.

“We have been searching for a clear consumer use case to justify the AI spend, and many see Muse as just that product,” Goldberg told Al Jazeera.

“Personally, I think Muse is just a step in the right direction; there will be better products – probably soon – but Muse is one of those things that are so useful they get investors excited about AI prospects again,” Goldberg said.

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