US stocks climbed Thursday as investors looked ahead to tomorrow's Jackson Hole speech.

It was another strong day for tech, but the bigger picture is getting more interesting. AI is moving deeper into the economy, Washington is taking a more active role in major industries, and investors have plenty to watch as the week wraps up.

Chairman Kevin Warsh is expected to deliver a speech on Friday, but his message remains anyone's guess.

Today:

📰 Nvidia's $442 billion day
🏛️ The government just became a major shareholder
🤖 100+ companies sign on to AI security

Let's get started.

This is not financial advice. Always do your own research. Past performance doesn’t guarantee future results.

More than 100 companies including OpenAI, Google, Microsoft, and Anthropic signed a letter calling for stronger AI cyber defense standards. This isn't about fear. It's about what frontier AI can actually do: solve hard problems autonomously at scale. That requires serious safeguards. The industry coordinating on standards now means adoption accelerates later.

Enterprise won't deploy AI without proven security. Governments won't automate critical systems without auditable standards. The companies that establish standards first unlock the massive markets that follow. Security standards don't slow adoption. They accelerate it.

Responsibility and capability compound together. The 100+ companies signing this letter are committing to build AI that enterprises, governments, and critical infrastructure can trust at scale. That's not restraint. That's the growth model. Enterprise integration, government adoption, infrastructure automation. All follow once security is proven.

This is abundance made responsible. Capability advancing alongside safeguards. The industry gets serious about scale, markets open up, and the AI revolution moves from labs into the economy.

In partnership with Genesis Mission

US stocks climbed Thursday as Nvidia's blockbuster earnings reignited faith in the AI trade and software stocks staged a massive comeback.

Nvidia stock leaped 8.7% after the chip giant crushed expectations and issued guidance that left Wall Street scrambling to update their models. The company said revenue will expand about 70% next fiscal year, well above the 45% growth analysts had penciled in. Bloomberg Intelligence called the forecast "jaw-dropping," noting it implies more than $100 billion of potential upside to current estimates. JPMorgan wrote that even though the outlook was much better than expected, Nvidia explicitly characterized demand as "materially higher" than what it can supply. The move added $442 billion to Nvidia's market cap in a single session, the second-largest one-day gain by any stock in history, trailing only Microsoft's $450 billion surge less than a month ago. Nvidia is now valued around $5.5 trillion.

Nvidia also agreed to buy Hugging Face for $12.9 billion, according to the Information, doubling down on the AI buildout. CEO Jensen Huang said on the earnings call that "the only regret that I have is that I didn't invest more and sooner" in AI labs. The open-source model repository deal signals Nvidia's appetite for vertical integration as it cements itself as the central stock of the AI era.

Salesforce and CrowdStrike ripped higher after both companies beat expectations and delivered strong guidance. Salesforce stock surged 22%, while CrowdStrike jumped 20%, giving software investors something to cheer about after months of underperformance relative to chip names. The moves suggest the AI trade may be broadening beyond semiconductors into enterprise software that can actually monetize the technology.

Alphabet has shed $692 billion in market value since hitting an all-time high in May, making it the second-biggest point drag on the S&P 500 over that stretch. The stock is down 15% from its peak as investors question whether the company is losing ground in the AI race. Earlier this month, Jeff Dean, a key architect of Google's AI strategy, departed to launch a startup and took several high-profile coworkers with him. Demis Hassabis also stepped down as CEO of Google DeepMind. "You've had this kind of brain drain," CFRA's Angelo Zino told Bloomberg. "It does pose some risk because it's the area of the market everybody is looking at." Adding to concerns, Alphabet's Gemini 3.5 Pro model is behind schedule as the company works on coding improvements where it already trails Anthropic and OpenAI.

The US is in talks with Venezuela to take a major stake in its oil fields, a dramatic move that could secure large reserves amid continued volatility from the Iran situation. Negotiators are discussing a 100-year lease on several oilfields, according to Bloomberg. The discussions follow President Trump's move earlier this year to seize Nicolás Maduro and install a more amenable leadership in Caracas. Obtaining Venezuelan reserves would boost US oil supplies at a time when Tehran's disruptions to the Strait of Hormuz continue to pressure global markets.

Jobless claims ticked down to 203,000, a positive sign for the labor market as the Fed prepares for its Jackson Hole Symposium. Bond yields have stabilized after spiking last week, though investors continue to weigh Treasury's intervention in the bond market and the likelihood that the Fed holds rates steady. Chairman Kevin Warsh is expected to deliver a speech on Friday, but his message remains anyone's guess.

Dollar General and Dollar Tree reported earnings with a split verdict on the state of the consumer. Both discount retailers beat expectations as they've attracted higher-income shoppers trading down, but their stocks diverged on differing outlooks. The reports offer a read on how Americans are managing their budgets amid persistent inflation pressures.

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Cheers,
Brandon & Blake of Invested Inc