Vanguard S&P 500 ETF Rises Amid Strong AI Leaders

Vanguard S&P 500 ETF ( $VOO ) has risen by 0.81% in the past week. It has experienced a 5-day net inflow of $14.91 billion.
This is due, in part, to market sentiment on some of the ETF’s largest holdings. For example:

• Nvidia Corporation stayed firmly at the center of the AI trade this week, with Wall Street highlighting both fresh strategic moves and long‑term upside. The chipmaker secured a high‑profile, non‑exclusive licensing deal with AI startup Groq, potentially worth up to $20 billion, gaining access to Groq’s ultra‑fast inference chips and bringing in its CEO Jonathan Ross and other senior talent to deepen Nvidia’s custom ASIC and inference capabilities. At the same time, U.S. regulators approved exports of Nvidia’s next‑generation H200 AI chips to China, reopening a crucial growth market. Top analysts including Wedbush’s Dan Ives, BofA, and Baird reiterated bullish views, seeing Nvidia as the core “picks and shovels” play on AI as workloads shift from training to inference. Consensus remains strongly positive, with a Strong Buy rating and average price targets around $260–$265 per share implying roughly 40% upside even after NVDA’s near‑40% year‑to‑date rally, though expectations are high and any slowdown in AI spending or increased competition could trigger sharp volatility.
• Apple Inc faced a mix of legal relief and regulatory pressure while posting signs of renewed strength in China, leaving investors cautiously optimistic. In the U.S., Apple avoided a fresh hit to its wearables franchise after a federal judge rejected Masimo’s latest attempt to block imports of the Apple Watch Series 9 and Ultra 2, allowing Apple to keep selling these high‑margin devices while the patent fight over blood‑oxygen technology continues; Apple has already pushed a software redesign that shifts more processing to the iPhone to address the dispute. In Brazil, the company agreed to open parts of its tightly controlled iOS ecosystem to settle an antitrust case, allowing third‑party app stores, alternative in‑app payments and external links for three years, underscoring rising global pressure on its App Store fees and business model. Meanwhile, new data from China showed foreign smartphone shipments surging on the back of strong demand for the iPhone 17 lineup, with Apple capturing a much larger share of local sales and potentially boosting December‑quarter results. Despite regulatory headwinds, AAPL still carries a Moderate Buy rating on Wall Street, with an average target near $299 per share implying high‑single‑digit upside as investors bet that services growth and resilient iPhone demand can offset legal and competitive risks.
• Microsoft continued to be framed as a prime long‑term winner of the AI boom, even as some investors warned about the risks of its aggressive spending and heavy exposure to OpenAI. The company reported powerful momentum in fiscal Q1 2026, with revenue up 18% year‑on‑year to $77.7 billion, driven by 28% growth in Intelligent Cloud and roughly 40% growth in Azure and other cloud services; commercial backlog has swelled to nearly $400 billion, reflecting deep, multi‑year commitments to Microsoft’s cloud and AI platforms. Management is leaning hard into this opportunity, lifting quarterly capex to $34.9 billion as it works to expand AI capacity by more than 80% this year and more than double its data‑center footprint over two years, backed by a tight strategic partnership with OpenAI that includes a roughly 27% stake and a $250 billion Azure usage commitment. Critics like investor David Desjardins caution that Microsoft may be overbuilding capacity and that OpenAI’s ability to honor such enormous contracts is uncertain, raising the specter of an AI “boom‑and‑bust” similar to past infrastructure cycles. Even so, most analysts remain firmly bullish: MSFT holds a Strong Buy consensus with an average 12‑month target around $630 per share, suggesting close to 30% upside as investors view the stock as a high‑quality, cash‑rich way to play enterprise AI adoption through Azure and Copilot over the next several years.