AI Dominates CE 100 Headlines but Index Posts Muted 0.5% Gain

All AI. All the time, it seems.

The CE 100 Index headed into a shortened holiday week with only slight gains, up 0.5%.

And as has been seen in recent weeks, excitement over AI helped drive some familiar names higher — in many cases, significantly so. The rallies in AI-focused names helped the Enablers group surge 5.2%.

C3.ai and Nvidia Lead the AI-Fueled Enthusiasm

C3.ai gathered 30%, building on gains seen last week. C3.ai’s continued uptrend came as the company made its C3 Generative AI Product Suite available publicly on Alphabet’s Google Cloud Marketplace. This joins its other AI solutions previously made available on the Google Cloud, and the company said that C3 Generative AI is offered as both a standalone application and also packaged as part of existing C3 AI applications.

Nvidia rocketed up 24.6%. As reported here, Nvidia soared in the wake of earnings. Results were buoyed by demand for chips used in AI applications. Demand is so strong that the company’s revenue forecast for the current quarter is 50% higher than Wall Street had expected.

The company’s data center segment, which includes the AI chops, saw its revenues soar 14% year over year and 18% sequentially to about $4.3 billion.

Colette Kress, CFO, said during the conference call with analysts, “Generative AI is driving exponential growth in compute requirements. … Generative AI drove significant upside in demand for our products, creating opportunities and broad-based global growth across our markets.”

Not all AI plays gained investor favor this week. Those rallies were offset by Snowflake, also in the Enablers segment. Shares in Snowflake sank more than 15%. The company’s latest earnings report showed that revenues grew by 48% year over year, though growth has been slowing, and as noted by CNBC, the company’s guidance anticipates a product revenue growth rate that is also slowing. Snowflake also announced it plans to acquire Neeva, a search startup that leverages generative AI in its enterprise offerings.

PDD Holdings (formerly Pinduduo) shares rallied 18%, leading the Shop pillar 2.7% higher. The company reported first-quarter results that showed revenues growing by 58% year over year to $480 million. Revenues from transaction services were 85% higher.

The Be Well segment lost 2.4%. Medtronic led decliners here, where the stock lost 8.9%. The latest earnings report disclosed global revenues of $8.5 billion, up 5.6% year over year, but operating margins contracted by 1.1% year over year.

Separately, WeWork lost ground for another week, giving up 10.5%. The company said in an SEC filing that WeWork Chief Financial Officer Andre Fernandez would step down from the role one year after taking the job. As reported earlier in the month, CEO Sandeep Mathrani is departing too.