“Nothing stops this train,” a menacing line uttered by the drug dealing Walter White in TV show Breaking Bad, feels appropriate to the unrelenting surge in tech stocks that has powered U.S. markets to a series of record highs. 

Neither faster inflation and rising bond yields nor a surprise elevation of Taiwan’s independence into talks between President Donald Trump and China’s leader Xi Jinping earlier today in Beijing, appear powerful enough to keep the tech train from driving stocks ever higher into next week’s first-quarter earnings from Nvidia.

AI chip maker Cerebras set an IPO price Wednesday evening that puts the listing proceeds at up to $6.4 billion and gives it a market value of about $55 billion. Its trading debut is Thursday.

Cisco Systems, the old tech stalwart now diving headfirst into the global AI pool, blasted Wall Street’s earnings forecasts last night, taking its 2026 stock gain to around 55%.

The moves cement the case for tech’s market-leading momentum, which has powered the Nasdaq more than 27% higher since late March and put the S&P 500 on pace for an annual gain of 10% over the coming days.

That could be why Xi has opted to inject Taiwan’s independent status into his two-day meeting with Trump, given the region’s importance to the chip sector and the broader AI trade that has powered markets higher since the ChatGPT-sparked rally, which began in 2022.

“Handled well, relations between the two countries can maintain overall stability,” Xi said. “Handled poorly, the two countries will collide or even clash.”

How that sours talks on topics such as Iran, Ukraine, and broader trade relations remains to be seen. What it clearly indicates, however, is how far—and how deeply—tech has embedded itself into the world’s two biggest economies.

—Martin Baccardax

Get more of the journalism you love. Choose Barron’s as a preferred source in Google.

Cisco beat expectations, fueled by hyperscaler artificial intelligence spending, though like other companies it is going to be cutting jobs to make room for its own investments. CEO Chuck Robbins told analysts Cisco’s technology is “more relevant than ever,” and a trimmer workforce frees resources for optics, silicon, and AI. 

• Cisco reported adjusted earnings of $1.06 a share on revenue of $15.8 billion. It makes most of its revenue from its networking segment, which has surged because of strong demand for the hardware needed to help power AI. Networking revenue for the quarter of $8.82 billion beat expectations.

• It’s also cutting 4,000 jobs, less than 5% of its workforce, in a restructuring. Robbins said in a blog post that winners in the AI era will be those with focus, urgency, and the discipline to continuously shift investment as demand changes. “This means making hard decisions,” Robbins said.

• Cisco’s layoff announcement adds to a rising number of job cuts in the tech sector this year. According to Layoffs.fyi, a website that tracks tech layoffs, 103,571 tech employees have been laid off in 2026. That’s getting close to the 124,201 total the website reported for all of 2025.

• It isn’t just demand for Cisco’s equipment that’s hot. Memory costs have been surging as demand outpaces supply, and that’s hurt tech hardware companies’ margins. Cisco is working to mitigate some of these cost headwinds by raising prices. Third quarter gross margins were 66%.

What’s Next: Cisco also said it expects fiscal fourth-quarter earnings to be between $1.16 a share to $1.18 a share on revenue between $16.7 billion and $16.9 billion. That’s higher than analyst estimates.

—Angela Palumbo

Micron Technology just joined the $900 billion club. Shares in the memory-chip maker racked up further gains on Wednesday as investors bet that labor unrest at rival Samsung Electronics would intensify a broader supply crunch.

• Shares closed up 4.8% to $803.63, bringing Micron’s market capitalization to $906.28 billion. It is the 12th most valuable U.S. company after Nvidia, Alphabet, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Broadcom, Tesla, Meta, Berkshire Hathaway, Walmart, and Eli Lilly.

• Memory chips are in high demand, making them a bottleneck in the booming market for artificial-intelligence data centers. Micron is the third largest producer of memory chips by market share, behind South Korean companies Samsung and SK Hynix.

• Talks between Samsung and its labor union to avert a walkout collapsed on Wednesday. Samsung said it would continue efforts to prevent a strike. Union leaders are seeking to remove legal obstacles to the walkout.

• The walkout could hit about 3% of global memory-chip production, according to Jefferies estimates. Any hit to Samsung’s output would increase demand for Micron’s hardware, which is already surging because of the wave of investment in AI infrastructure.

What’s Next: There will soon be another way for U.S. investors to play the memory-chip boom. SK Hynix said in March that it had filed an application to list American depositary receipts with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

—Adam Clark, Kit Norton, Anita Hamilton, and George Glover

Fervo Energy’s initial public offering is a sign that hot rocks make hot investments. The Bill Gates-backed geothermal energy firm became the largest energy or utility IPO since 2013, according to Renaissance Capital, selling $1.9 billion of shares and kicking off trading on Wednesday with a 35% gain.

• The company drills deep into the Earth to harness steam for electric generation. It raised more capital than the $1.3 billion initially anticipated, raising its market value to around $8 billion. Fervo says it can drill through rocks and use shale-industry techniques to make more areas geothermal friendly.

• Gates, the billionaire co-founder of Microsoft, sees geothermal as a clean and reliable way to generate electricity, and has partnership with tech firms like Alphabet, which thinks geothermal could help power things like data centers while supporting its goals to decarbonize operations.

• Fervo CFO David Ulrey told Barron’s that they spoke to investors before the IPO and found broad interest in the technology—from traditional energy investors who were looking for the future, to generalists excited about artificial intelligence, hyperscalers, and power.

• To make money and attract more customers, Fervo will have to bring down the cost of its technology. It is working to lower the cost of building its Utah project from $7,000 a kilowatt to $3,000, which would arguably make it a better investment than gas plants.

What’s Next: The hot IPOs continue. Today, AI chip maker Cerebras is to begin trading Nasdaq under the ticker “CBRS,” in a key test of sentiment for the semiconductor sector. It priced the IPO at $185 a share, above its expected range, to raise more than $5.5 billion.

—Avi Salzman, Adam Levine, and Janet H. Cho

President Donald Trump’s entourage in China includes top tech, industrial, and finance executives, but he also brought the hopes of America’s agricultural sector. For American farmers and meat producers, Trump’s meeting with China’s Xi Jinping could be a test of Beijing’s willingness to return to the U.S. agricultural market.

• Agricultural trade is an area where both sides have practical reasons to cooperate: China needs food security and diversified supplies. As the world’s biggest soybean importer it has leaned on Brazil, especially during heightened trade tensions with the U.S. Meanwhile, America’s farmers need demand and stable income.

• After the Trump-Xi meeting in October 2025, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said China agreed to buy 25 million metric tons of U.S. soybeans annually for the next three years, a figure China hasn’t confirmed. The Council on Foreign Relations said China will likely announce or reaffirm soybean buying commitments.

• A renewed Chinese commitment to buy more American soybeans could help support not only U.S. farmers, but also grain traders and processors like Archer Daniels Midland and Bunge plus farm equipment makers like Deere that depend on healthy farm income.

• Meat producers like Tyson Foods and Cargill are watching closely, too. China is an important export market for U.S. beef and poultry, but access is uncertain after export registrations for hundreds of U.S. meat plants expired over the past year. The summit could address whether those licenses will be renewed. 

What’s Next: Trade summits often generate optimistic headlines without producing immediate purchasing commitments. Analysts at the Brookings Institution said expectations for the summit should remain low, since the relationship remains fragile. Many Chinese analysts see a shift after the midterms or after Trump leaves office.