Nvidia stock (NVDA) closed at a record high on Thursday, rising 1.3% amid a broader market rally and putting shares one step closer to unseating Apple (AAPL) as the most valuable company in market history.

During Thursday's shortened trading session ahead of the July Fourth holiday, shares of the AI chipmaker rose more than 2% to give the company a market cap of $3.92 trillion. As of Thursday's close, the company's market cap settled at $3.89 trillion, just fractionally off the record of $3.915 trillion Apple clinched in late 2024.

The iPhone maker's value has dropped since then as it struggled to catch up to its Big Tech peers on AI and has contended with President Trump's threat to hit its overseas-made products with tariffs.

Investors have piled into Nvidia after its most recent quarterly earnings report in late May showed the chipmaker continuing to thrive, despite US restrictions on Chinese use of its chips. The stock has continued to notch fresh record highs since late June.

Thursday's rally adds to what's been a remarkable turnaround for Nvidia stock after a rocky start to 2025, with shares now up more than 19% this year.

Wedbush analyst Dan Ives said Thursday he expects Nvidia to hit a $4 trillion market capitalization this summer and potentially $5 trillion over the next 18 months.

“We believe tech stocks will have a very strong second half of the year," he said in a note to clients Thursday. "Our bullish view is that investors are still underestimating the tidal wave of growth on the horizon from the $2 trillion of spending over the next 3 years coming from enterprise and government spending around AI technology and use cases."

Other market watchers are more skeptical about the AI boom. Legendary short seller Jim Chanos told Bloomberg that the "ecosystem around the AI boom" is similar to the dot-com bubble.

“But it is a riskier revenue stream because if people pull back, they can pull back CapEx very easily. Projects can get put on hold ... and that immediately shows up in disappointing revenues and earnings forecast, if it happens," Chanos said.

“We’re not there yet, but that’s one of the risks out there that I think a lot of people are underestimating,” he added.

Laura Bratton is a reporter for Yahoo Finance. Follow her on Bluesky @laurabratton.bsky.social. Email her at laura.bratton@yahooinc.com.

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It's not just the Nvidias (NVDA) of the world that have seen an atmospheric rise as investors piled into the AI trade over the past year. Top startups competing in key areas, from humanoid robots to AI search, have also seen their private market share prices surge.

"In today's VC landscape, there's a clear split between the 'haves' and the 'have-nots,'" Emily Zheng, senior VC analyst at PitchBook, told Yahoo Finance. According to Zheng, a handful of breakout AI startups are driving the majority of valuation growth. Some are raising capital at astonishing prices while attracting intense demand from primary and secondary investors.

That demand — often fueled by a mix of FOMO, conviction in AI tech, and limited liquidity options — has helped push the US VC secondary market to an estimated $60 billion in size this year, up from $50 billion in 2024, according to PitchBook. But this sharp rise doesn't mean venture is booming across the board — most of the activity is concentrated in a small, highly sought-after cohort.

Among the top five private-market gainers this year, the average year-to-date share price is up a staggering 393%. Together, these startups have added over $68 billion in estimated valuation so far in 2025, per Yahoo Finance data.

Here are the top 52-week gainers in private markets according to Yahoo Finance data, provided by Forge and EquityZen.

1. Figure AI

• Estimated valuation: $35.26B

• Year founded: 2022

• YTD share price: +1,012%

The humanoid robots startup aims to bring AI-powered robots that can work in factories and homes alike to the mass market. Enthusiasm around AI and robotics, such as Tesla's (TSLA) Optimus, has continued to rise. Figure AI recently raised $1.5 billion in a May funding round, bringing its total raise to $2.25 billion.

2. Ripple

• Estimated valuation: $15.64B

• Year founded: 2012

• YTD share price: +286.16%

Ripple, the blockchain-based payments platform, has seen renewed investor enthusiasm amid broader interest in crypto infrastructure and decentralized finance. CEO Brad Garlinghouse recently announced that Ripple would drop its years-long cross-appeals with the SEC, following the agency's claim that Ripple sold its XRP token as an unregistered security.

3. Perplexity

• Estimated valuation: $10.99B

• Year founded: 2022

• YTD share price: +260.16%

Perplexity, the buzzy AI-powered search engine, has positioned itself as a serious challenger to Google (GOOG) by delivering real-time answers with cited sources. Backed by investors like Nvidia and Amazon (AMZN) founder Jeff Bezos, the startup has seen rapid adoption. It's reportedly in talks to raise up to $1 billion, which could push its valuation to $18 billion.

Microsoft (MSFT) is cutting its workforce by up to 4%, the company confirmed Wednesday.

The reductions, first reported by the Seattle Times, would amount to up to 9,120 jobs. Microsoft had 228,000 full-time employees as of June 2024, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing.

The development comes as the tech giant, like other hyperscalers, invests billions of dollars in its artificial intelligence efforts. Microsoft is set to spend $80 billion in 2025 to build out AI data centers.

"We continue to implement organizational changes necessary to best position the company and teams for success in a dynamic marketplace," a Microsoft spokesperson said in a statement to Yahoo Finance Wednesday, adding that the company wants to reduce layers of management and "empower employees to spend more time focusing on meaningful work by leveraging new technologies and capabilities."

Microsoft previously said it would cut its workforce by roughly 3%, or 6,000 employees, in May, followed by about 300 reported job cuts in June.

Microsoft stock is hovering near all-time highs. On Wednesday, shares were trading flat.

Read more: Do you pay taxes on unemployment?

The news of the job cuts comes as investors are closely watching for cracks in the US labor market amid tariff uncertainty. New data from ADP showed that private employers unexpectedly lost 33,000 jobs in June, marking the first month of job losses in the private sector since March 2023.

Microsoft's peers in the tech industry have spoken about how the shift to artificial intelligence could lead to job loss.

Last month, Amazon (AMZN) CEO Andy Jassy said the company will reduce its workforce in the coming years.

"As we roll out more Generative AI and agents, it should change the way our work is done. We will need fewer people doing some of the jobs that are being done today, and more people doing other types of jobs," Jassy said in a memo to employees.

Ines Ferre is a Senior Business Reporter for Yahoo Finance. Follow her on X at @ines_ferre.

Yahoo Finance's Laura Bratton contributed to this report.

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After a fundraising round that pinned the AI startup's value at more than $60 billion, Anthropic (ANTH.PVT) has enjoyed a vigorous run.

The company notched an early court victory over a copyright lawsuit with implications for AI's future, and now it stands in contention to power Apple's new version of Siri.

That would place Anthropic's Claude model in one of the most enviable positions in tech.

This week, Bloomberg reported that Apple is considering using AI technology from outside firms to power an updated version of its assistant, possibly sidelining its own in-house efforts, as part of a broader push to keep pace in the AI arms race.

The report comes on the heels of Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg's aggressive recruitment drive to poach top AI researchers and engineers at rival shops. He has offered as much as $100 million to pull outside talent into the Meta fold. On top of that, Zuckerberg had reportedly tried to acquire the AI startup Safe Superintelligence, but after the offer was turned down pursued its CEO instead. Meta also recently invested $14 billion in the data-labeling startup Scale AI and hired its top executive, Alexandr Wang, to help lead a new superintelligence unit inside the company.

The intertwining developments capture something important about the business of AI development. They get at how the public views AI's leading upstarts and the tech platforms competing with and courting them. Call it AI's corporate phase.

If the last two years were defined largely by the advancements in technology — the splashy presentations and dazzling updates about "compute" — we've now moved on to more refined questions about consumer integration and where these products fit into the tech ecosystem. The focus is moving from feats of research, development, engineering, and infrastructure to triumphs of dealmaking, marketing, and hiring. It's "go-to-market" time, and it's the MBAs' turn now.

And that makes sense. It's harder to refute just how massively capable AI has become and how the conversation around it has broadened, even as incidents where chatbots hallucinate or cite fake sources still repeatedly crop up. That sharpening of AI's skill and capability has another logical conclusion: If Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, and the rest continue down their path of ever-increasing power, what exactly differentiates them from each other? What happens when AI becomes a commodity like the internet or even a search engine?

Oracle stock (ORCL) jumped roughly 4% Monday to hit a record closing high after the software giant disclosed that it inked new multibillion-dollar cloud services agreements.

In a filing to the US Securities and Exchange Commission, the company provided commentary that CEO Safra Catz planned to share with other Oracle colleagues on Monday.

"Oracle is off to a strong start in FY26," Catz's statement read. "Our MultiCloud database revenue continues to grow at over 100%, and we signed multiple large cloud services agreements including one that is expected to contribute more than $30 billion in annual revenue starting in FY28."

Read more about Oracle's stock moves and today's market action.

In its 2025 fiscal year, which ended May 31, Oracle's revenue from its cloud services business amounted to $24.5 billion, and total revenue was $57.4 billion.

Oracle shares jumped as much as 8.6% to an intraday high of $228. Last week, Oracle stock cleared a record high of just over $215. Shares have climbed more than 33% over the past month, ahead of the tech-heavy Nasdaq's (^IXIC) 6.4% gain.

Oracle's jump on Monday also follows a note from Stifel analyst Brad Reback upgrading the stock to Buy from Hold. Reback raised his price target on Oracle shares to $250 from $180, citing momentum in its cloud business.

Reback wrote, "Cloud gains should generate accelerating total revenue increases in coming years."

The company partnered with OpenAI (OPAI.PVT) and SoftBank (SFTBY) to launch the highly publicized $500 billion Stargate project to build out US AI data centers earlier this year, but the project has stalled.

Reback wrote that "while Oracle's expanding relationship with OpenAI is expected to contribute to Cloud growth going forward, management has indicated that potential revenue from the Stargate project would be incremental to current total Oracle revenue growth expectations."

Like other Big Tech hyperscalers, Oracle has ramped up its spending to build out data centers to power artificial intelligence. Oracle's capital expenditures soared from $6.9 billion in its 2024 fiscal year to $21.2 billion in 2025 and are expected to rise to over $25 billion in the current year. Still, the company is spending much less than other tech firms.

"While the higher capital spending will lead to additional near-term gross-margin compression, there is no question this management team is extremely adept at managing expenses," Reback wrote.

But just as Oracle touched new highs, lauded short seller Jim Chanos warned that the wider ecosystem of AI stocks could be nearing a pullback, likening the surge in AI stocks to the dot-com bubble.

Microsoft says its AI can now outperform doctors in diagnosing complex medical cases.

"We already have 50 million health-related queries per day coming through Copilot and Bing," Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman said on Yahoo Finance's Opening Bid. "Our goal is to provide the most high quality, most accurate, and ultimately the cheapest health advice and support."

The six-year relationship between Microsoft (MSFT) and Sam Altman's OpenAI (OPAI.PVT) is widely seen as one of the most successful tie-ups in recent memory. Microsoft has invested close to $14 billion in the ChatGPT maker, gaining access to its models. OpenAI has leveraged Microsoft's computing power to feed its ever-more-powerful models.

OpenAI has gone on to raise billions, with its last round in March valuing it at $300 billion. The company's valuation has since climbed to $325 billion, according to Yahoo Finance private company data.

Since disclosing an initial $1 billion investment in OpenAI on July 22, 2019, Microsoft shares are up 263%. The S&P 500 has gained 107%.

In new research, the tech giant said the Microsoft AI Diagnostics Orchestrator (MAI-Dx0) can correctly diagnose up to 85% of the New England Journal of Medicine's case proceedings. That rate is more than four times higher than a group of experienced physicians. The best-performing MAI-DxO was paired with OpenAI's o3 model.

Users shouldn't say goodbye to their doctors just yet. "Your physician will be there to make the right judgment call at the right time, to plan treatment after diagnosis and to oversee and hold the AI accountable," Suleyman said.

Recently, the relationship between Microsoft and OpenAI has begun to sour. OpenAI wants Microsoft to ease up its hold on its AI offerings and allow for its conversion to a for-profit company.

The pact between the two is slated to last until 2030 but could end earlier if OpenAI's board declares it has developed artificial general intelligence (AGI).

Suleyman downplayed any tension in the partnership.

"The relationship's in pretty good shape," he said. "It's one of the best technology partnerships there has been, and it will continue for at least another five years, hopefully many decades after that."

He acknowledged ongoing discussions around the agreement, describing it as a "very complicated contract," adding that they are part of a healthy, evolving alliance and one "that's definitely going to continue."

Suleyman is one of the most prominent names in artificial intelligence.

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I have spent the entire week live on Opening Bid discussing tech.

Nvidia's (NVDA) record-high stock price.

Circle's (CRCL) exploding — then plunging — stock price.

Micron's (MU) surprisingly strong quarter, coming a day after FedEx's (FDX) limp quarter suggested economic weakness ahead.

The potential of a new tech bubble as traders pile into the July 30 rate cut from the Federal Reserve narrative.

But all week long, I didn't mention a single social media name. No Meta (META). No Snap (SNAP). No Reddit (RDDT).

I should've mentioned Reddit, however.

While the stock is playing its part in the major jump in tech stocks the past month (+37%), shares are still down 14% year to date amid fears that Google's AI initiatives will drive traffic away from Reddit content.

After talking with experts this past week and earlier at the Cannes Lions conference, I think the relative underperformance of Reddit's stock versus the market is overdone.

"Reddit is at the epicenter of disruptive finance and a major player in the years ahead," Wedbush tech analyst Dan Ives told me.

The company has greatly improved the content quality on its platform, attracting advertisers' interest. It's also making a large investment in AI-powered search to serve up more relevant content.

Reddit COO Jen Wong told me at Cannes Lions (video above) that the company is all in on AI.

"Reddit is a lot of conversation in words, so AI allows us to machine translate global conversations into multiple languages, and we're doing this today in French and German, in fact, and in almost 12 different languages," Wong said. "And these are conversations that are about universal life experiences, like parenting or pop culture."

The company is defending its business against AI chatbot startup and web scraper Anthropic (and others of its ilk). That could have a positive outcome for the business.

"What's important to us is that we are able to protect our users' privacy, their deletion rights, like we have policies that ensure that when users take down a post, the post is taken down," Wong said. "And so it's really important, and as we've said in our terms of service, that we have a conversation with folks who have access to our data because that's a commitment that we have in terms of our policies, and it's also to know how Reddit data is used."