Tesla, IBM, and Meta Platforms helped lead most US stocks higher on Thursday after a rush of profit reports from some of the country's most influential companies.
- The Dow rose 168.61 points, or 0.4%, to 44,882.13.
- The S&P 500 gained 31.86 points to 6,071.17, up 0.5% as four out of every five stocks in the index climbed.
- The Nasdaq composite added 49.43 to 19,681.75, a rise of 0.3%.
Meta Platforms climbed 1.6%, after the company behind Facebook and Instagram delivered a better profit for the end of 2024 than analysts expected. Perhaps just as important for the market, the AP reports, it talked up its artificial intelligence efforts and said it will continue to invest in the space. That calmed some of the worries created by a Chinese upstart, DeepSeek, when it said it developed a large language model capable of competing with the world's best, without having to use top-flight chips. That raised questions about whether all the investment expected for AI chips, data centers, and electricity is really needed and sent a shock through markets at the start of the week.
Keeping indexes in check was Microsoft, which fell 6.2%. The software giant topped analysts' expectations for profit in the latest quarter, but the focus was instead on the slower-than-expected growth in its cloud computing business, which is a centerpiece of its AI efforts. Tesla rose 2.9% though the electric-vehicle company reported a weaker profit for the latest quarter than analysts expected. IBM rallied 13% after beating analysts' expectations for profit. CEO Arvind Krishna pointed to its growing book of generative AI business and said IBM expects its overall revenue to grow at least 5% this year. (More Wall Street stories.)
,
uBlock 
,
and
Ghostery 
)
