AI's Promise, Tech Debut Lift Stocks

U.S. stocks ticked higher Friday after Wall Street showed its appetite is still big for winners of the artificial intelligence boom.

• The Dow rose 149.60 points, or 0.3%, to 52,637.01, finishing the week down 0.5%.
• The S&P 500 rose 31.75 points, or 0.4%, to 7,575.39, up 1.2% for the week.
• The Nasdaq composite rose 74.72 points, or 0.3%, to 26,281.61, up 1.7% for the week.

SK Hynix, a giant South Korean maker of memory chips, shone in the debut of its stock trading on the Nasdaq, the AP reports. After raising roughly $26.5 billion by selling American depositary shares at a price of $149 each, it jumped immediately after trading began at midday and finished with a gain of 13.1%. SK Hynix's stock in Seoul has already surged 634% over the last year thanks to euphoria around AI. The boom has created real profits due to surging demand for computer memory. But it's also raised worries that AI stock prices have shot have too high and that all the world's spending on chips and data centers won't be able to produce enough productivity and profit growth to make it worth it. That's led to sharp recent swings for AI stocks, which have grown into some of Wall Street's most influential because of their huge sizes.

Nvidia was the strongest single force lifting the S&P 500 on Friday after rising 4%. Beyond the uncertainty about AI, the focus on Wall Street is shifting to the upcoming reporting season for companies' profits during the spring. Elsewhere on Wall Street, Circle Internet Group rose 5%. The company behind the USDC cryptocurrency, which is supposed to keep the value of $1, said it won US regulatory approval to establish a bank. It will operate under the name Circle National Trust, and CEO Jeremy Allaire said the move "marks a defining step in bringing blockchain technology and digital assets into the core of the US financial system." WD-40's stock jumped 10.6% after reporting much stronger profit for the latest quarter than analysts expected.