Good afternoon and welcome to Markets Desk.
Nvidia is making a major strategic move, announcing plans to acquire Hugging Face in a deal valued at thirteen billion dollars. Analysts are framing it as defensive positioning — as long as open-source AI models remain dominant, Nvidia keeps its custom chip rivals from gaining ground. Jensen Huang's net worth is now approaching two hundred billion dollars, with shares trading up roughly one percent on the news.
Staying in tech, the Invesco Dorsey Wright Technology Momentum ETF was among Friday's standout performers, gaining nearly four percent on the session. Two components drove much of that strength — Aehr Test Systems surging nearly twelve percent and Sandisk climbing over nine percent, reflecting renewed appetite for semiconductor-adjacent names heading into the weekend.
On the dividend front, several notable companies declared quarterly payouts today. Salesforce announced forty-four cents per share, payable in October of two thousand twenty six to shareholders of record in mid-September. Harley-Davidson also approved a quarterly distribution, part of a broader Friday slate that included names across consumer and real estate sectors — a quiet but steady reminder that income investing remains active even on lighter trading days.
That's the tape. Markets Desk, signing off the floor.
