-- Tech stocks rose late Tuesday afternoon, with the State Street Technology Select Sector SPDR ETF (XLK) advancing 1.4% and the State Street SPDR S&P Semiconductor ETF (XSD) gaining 2.2%.
The Philadelphia Semiconductor index added 2%.
In corporate news, IonQ (IONQ) shares surged 19% after the company said it has been awarded a contract in the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's Heterogeneous Architectures for Quantum program.
Microsoft (MSFT) will rent data center capacity from Nscale at a campus in Narvik, Norway, first intended for OpenAI, Bloomberg reported. Microsoft will rent 30,000 additional Nvidia (NVDA) Vera Rubin chips at the site, building on a prior $6.2 billion commitment, after OpenAI failed to reach an agreement with Nscale to run its workloads at the campus under its Stargate initiative, the report said. Microsoft shares were up 2.1%.
Amazon (AMZN) agreed to buy mobile satellite services operator Globalstar (GSAT) as it aims to add direct-to-device services to its Leo satellite network. Amazon shares rose 3.9%, and Globalstar jumped 9%.
Nvidia (NVDA) shares rose 3.6% after the company said Tuesday it is launching a family of quantum AI models, Ising, designed to allow companies to build quantum processors that will be able to run useful applications.