Cisco: To Work With Blackrock, Global Infrastructure Partners, Mgx, Microsoft, Nvidia And Xai To Accelerate Innovation And Scaling Of Ai Data Centers

U.S. stocks advanced for a second straight day on Tuesday, buoyed by signs of easing trade tensions with China and fresh inflation data that came in softer than expected. The gains helped the S&P 500 swing back into positive territory for the year, marking a sharp turnaround from earlier losses.

The benchmark index rose 0.9 percent, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite surged 1.8 percent, powered by a more than 5 percent rally in Nvidia. Other tech majors, including Meta Platforms, Netflix, and Amazon, also posted solid gains, each rising around 2 percent. However, the Dow Jones Industrial Average bucked the trend, slipping 193 points, or 0.4 percent, weighed down by a steep 16 percent drop in UnitedHealth shares.

With Tuesday’s rally, the S&P 500 is now up 0.1 percent for 2025—an impressive recovery from a drawdown of more than 17 percent earlier this year, when escalating U.S.-China trade tensions rattled markets.

Investor sentiment received a strong boost this week after Washington and Beijing announced a 90-day truce on new tariffs, offering some respite to global markets. The momentum was further supported by the White House unveiling a massive $600 billion domestic investment plan, adding to the market’s risk-on mood.

Data released Tuesday showed the U.S. consumer price index rose 2.3 percent year-on-year in April, slightly below the 2.4 percent economists had anticipated. The core reading, which excludes volatile food and energy prices, held steady at 2.8 percent.

That was enough to ease two of the market’s biggest concerns—persistent inflation and trade-driven economic slowdown.

Shares of UnitedHealth plunged 16 percent after the healthcare giant withdrew its 2025 guidance, citing a spike in medical costs that exceeded expectations. In a separate development, the company announced the sudden resignation of CEO Andrew Witty, who stepped down with immediate effect, citing personal reasons.

Rigetti Computing tumbled over 7 percent after the quantum computing firm reported first-quarter revenue of $1.5 million, falling short of analyst estimates of $2.6 million, according to FactSet. Despite the revenue miss, the company surprised on the bottom line, posting a profit of 13 cents per share versus expectations of a 5-cent loss.

In contrast, Coinbase shares soared 17 percent after news broke that the cryptocurrency exchange would be added to the S&P 500. The stock will replace Discover Financial Services in the benchmark index, with the change set to take effect before trading begins on May 19.Disclaimer: The views and investment tips expressed by investment experts on Moneycontrol.com are their own and not those of the website or its management. Moneycontrol.com advises users to check with certified experts before taking any investment decisions.

By Adriano Marchese and Connor Hart

Humain, the arm of Saudi Arabia's public investment fund focused on artificial intelligence, will partner with several U.S. tech companies to build out AI infrastructure in the country.

The AI value-chain subsidiary of Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund on Monday said it has formed strategic partnerships with Nvidia, Amazon.com and Advanced Micro Devices. Under these three collaborations, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia expects more than $15 billion of investments to contribute to the deployment of hundreds of megawatts of AI compute capacity over the coming years.

Humain earlier in the day disclosed its partnership with chipmaking giant Nvidia, under which it planned to build AI factories in the country with a projected capacity of up to 500 megawatts, powered by hundreds of thousands of Nvidia's GPUs.

The first phase of deployment would involve about 18,000 of Nvidia's supercomputers, the parties said.

Later, in a separate release, Humain said it would work with Amazon's cloud business, Amazon Web Services, to invest more than $5 billion and build what it called an AI Zone. This zone is set to combine multiple AI capabilities and will allow Humain to develop AI solutions using AWS technologies for its end customers, it added.

Amazon's recent investment follows a previously announced, separate $5.3 billion investment to build an AWS infrastructure region in Saudi Arabia that is set to become available next year.

Humain will additionally partner with Advanced Micro Devices to build a network of AMD-based AI computing centers stretching from Saudi Arabia to the U.S. The parties will invest up to $10 billion to deploy 500 megawatts of AI computing capacity over the next five years.

The AI superstructure built by AMD and Humain will be open by design, accessible at scale and optimized to power AI workloads across enterprise, start-up and sovereign markets, they said.

Investors rallied behind the investments. In afternoon trading Tuesday, Nvidia's shares rose 5.8%, to $130.18; Amazon's shares climbed 2.4%, to $213.75; and AMD's shares gained 3.8%, to $112.27.

Write to Adriano Marchese at adriano.marchese@wsj.com and Connor Hart at connor.hart@wsj.com