On Friday, the top trading volume stock on US markets was SpaceX, which closed up 15.83% with a massive $300.16 billion in turnover. Reports indicate that SpaceX is planning to construct its own power generation facilities to support a large-scale semiconductor manufacturing plant it is co-developing with Tesla in Texas, USA. Earlier this week, Riley Trettel, SpaceX's head of energy and data center development, stated at a public meeting in Grimes County, Texas: "We will be self-supplying power. We will build a gas-fired power plant, and we will also construct a very large battery array to store energy. We will start this project almost immediately. We need to begin earthwork, start building infrastructure and foundations, and we will push forward right away." This statement provided more details on the new factory plan, code-named "Terafab," being advanced by two of Elon Musk's companies.
The second-highest volume stock was Micron, which fell 0.44% with $295.93 billion in turnover. Analysts suggest US stock investors are closely monitoring whether new shifts in supply and demand dynamics will emerge in the memory sector, with the market generally predicting that memory prices will remain high until the end of 2028.
The third-highest volume stock was Nvidia, which rose 2.27% with $233.69 billion in turnover. The stock posted a cumulative weekly gain of 11.56%.
Palantir ranked sixth, climbing 10.32% to close with $128.99 billion in turnover. The stock surged nearly 40% for the week, marking its best single-week performance since 2024, signaling that it is no longer a laggard in the AI sector. Palantir's strong US commercial business performance was fully reflected in its financial results. The US commercial segment has become its largest growth driver, up 149% year-over-year. The company has consistently emphasized the importance of Sovereign AI, pushing for organizations to have autonomy over their data and models. This stance has set Palantir apart from leading AI labs, with CEO Alex Karp accusing these labs of attempting to "colonize" their clients by absorbing their business intelligence and proprietary data. However, this approach appears to resonate with the company's clients, who use its platform to connect disparate data sources and deploy AI models across core business operations. In the second quarter, Palantir secured over $20 billion in total US commercial contract value, a 153% increase from the same period last year. The strong performance has boosted Wall Street's confidence in the company. Palantir was hailed as an AI darling in 2025 but had a difficult start in early 2026 due to a broader sell-off in the software sector. As of late June, its year-to-date losses had reached as high as 40%. Now, its stock price is near breakeven for the year.
Tesla ranked eighth, closing up 2.83% with $127.08 billion in turnover. On August 7, SpaceX and Tesla jointly announced the launch of the Terafab project, with an initial investment of $16.8 billion, aimed at bridging the gap between the global chip supply and the computing power exceeding 1 terawatt that both companies are expected to need over the next several years. Musk estimated that about 25% of AI computing power will be used for Tesla's Optimus robot, with 75% for AI-powered spacecraft.
Ranking 12th, Alphabet (Class A) fell 0.96% with $69.99 billion in turnover. Google underwent a major AI business restructuring this week, with DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis transitioning to Chairman, Chief Scientist Jeff Dean departing, and incoming Senior Vice President Koray Kavukcuoglu taking over daily management, shifting the power center from London to California headquarters. The adjustment aims to accelerate the commercialization of Gemini and close the gap with OpenAI, Anthropic, and Meta. Hassabis faced internal dissatisfaction at Google due to his focus on research over commercial concerns, and his decision to make AlphaFold freely available also sparked controversy. Stepping away from management, he will focus on AI drug discovery company Isomorphic Labs and pursue his AGI vision. However, the restructuring has caused upheaval within DeepMind, with some employees fearing the end of the research culture, and several already preparing to leave.
Lumentum ranked 15th, rising 6.22% with $51 billion in turnover. Reports indicate that the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is drafting a new import ban on certain optical modules. Driven by this news, US-listed domestic optical module concept stocks collectively rose.
Seagate ranked 18th, falling 4.71% with $47.17 billion in turnover. US-listed memory concept stocks generally declined on Friday.
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