Investors shrug off AI safety concerns and Iran war, sending market to a new peak.
Published On 23 Sep 202623 Sep 2026
Wall Street’s Nasdaq stock exchange has hit an all-time high, shrugging off concerns about AI safety risks, sky-high tech valuations and the energy shock caused by the United States’ war on Iran.
The Nasdaq Composite index, which is dominated by US tech giants such as Nvidia, Apple and Microsoft, rose 0.45 percent on Tuesday, taking its gains to date this year to more than 17 percent.
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The Nasdaq 100, a narrower index that tracks 100 top companies, jumped 0.82 percent.
The S&P 500, the most popular measure of the overall US stock market, closed essentially flat.
Monolithic Power Systems, a Florida-based manufacturer of power circuits, and Canadian e-commerce company Shopify led the gains, surging 8.1 percent and 7.1 percent, respectively.
Micron Technology, one of the world’s top three memory chip makers along with South Korea’s SK Hynix and Samsung Electronics, rose 5 percent.
Chip giant Nvidia, the world’s most valuable company, gained 0.7 percent, while Apple edged up 0.2 percent.
Meta Platforms, which soared 11.4 percent on Monday on excitement surrounding its new AI assistant Muse, dropped 0.63 percent.
Major Asian stock markets opened higher on Wednesday, with Japan’s benchmark Nikkei 225 and South Korea’s Kospi up about 1.4 percent and 0.1 percent, respectively, in morning trading.
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index opened lower, falling more than 0.7 percent during the morning trade.
Oil prices were largely flat on Tuesday, after falling more than 3 percent the previous day amid improving oil flows out of the Gulf and hopes of renewed diplomacy 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 on Tuesday told reporters that US 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 session to warn that he could “annihilate” Iran if Tehran did not agree to a deal on the war.
Trump, whose war on Iran is nearing 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 the potential of AI to generate profits after years of multibillion-dollar investments.
“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.
Sven Piper/iStock Editorial via Getty Images
SpaceX (SPCX) will account for a larger weighting of the Nasdaq 100 (NDX) when the quarterly rebalance of the index takes effect next week, Bloomberg reported on Saturday, confirming provisional data published by the index provider last week.
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Britain’s most valuable private company has clarified where it intends to sell its shares.
Nik Storonsky, Revolut’s founder and CEO, told French newspaper Les Echos on Thursday that the group is weighing a dual listing across the London Stock Exchange and the Nasdaq, confirming earlier media reports.
A spokesperson for Revolut confirmed the report to Euronews.
The US remains Storonsky preference, and he was candid about why, stating that “it’s a larger market. It includes institutional investors, hedge funds, fund managers and a considerable number of individual investors.”
“So we have the choice between selling in a small market with few buyers, or in a gigantic market with a huge number of buyers who will compete fiercely for our shares,” Storonsky added.
The comments mark a softening.
The Revolut CEO argued in 2024 that the London Stock Exchange simply could not compete with American venues, citing thin liquidity and the UK’s 0.5% stamp duty on share purchases, and had appeared to rule out listing at home altogether.
The London exchange has endured a prolonged drought of new listings, with companies either staying private or heading west. For instance, payments group Wise moved its primary listing to New York this year, and AstraZeneca has also expanded its presence in the US.
Revolut going public at anything near its current valuation would make it one of Britain’s largest listed companies, potentially worth more than Barclays or NatWest.
A secondary share sale in July valued the business at roughly $115 billion (€100bn), up from $75 billion (€65bn) in November.
When asked by Euronews about internal discussions regarding a timeline for the IPO, the spokesperson refused to comment, but pointed to a previous interview with Bloomberg in April of this year where the Revolut CEO stated “in two years time, but it depends on how good the market is.”
Progress as certainly been made as the company has spent this year assembling the regulatory foundations a listing will require.
It secured a full UK banking licence in March after a long wait that Storonsky has publicly blamed on British regulators, obtained a French licence in August, received conditional approval for a US national bank charter this month, and announced on Wednesday that it had applied for a Swiss licence alongside plans to invest more than 150 million Swiss francs (€158m) there.
Revolut has not stated which venue would host the primary listing, whether the two would happen simultaneously, or when formal preparations might begin.