September 25, 2026, (Inside AI) — U.S. equity futures climbed early Friday as renewed optimism around artificial intelligence outweighed investor anxiety over crude oil prices above $100 a barrel and a 10-year Treasury yield stuck at 5.1%. Dow E-minis rose 162 points, or 0.31%, while S&P 500 E-minis added 23.75 points, also 0.31%. Nasdaq 100 E-minis gained 188 points, or 0.61%, by 5:15 a.m. ET.
The split screen tells the story. War-driven inflation fears are pressuring the broader market, but AI-linked names are pulling capital in the opposite direction. Chipmakers Advanced Micro Devices, Marvell, Cerebras, and Intel each rose about 2% in premarket trading. Megacaps Tesla, Nvidia, and SpaceX traded modestly higher. The communication services and technology sectors led weekly gains among S&P 500 groups.
One deal stood out. Akamai Technologies surged 21% after signing an $11.6 billion cloud services agreement with AI lab Anthropic. The contract size signals that frontier AI developers now require infrastructure commitments comparable to those of major cloud providers, a shift that reshapes how investors value legacy content delivery networks.
Meta extended its rally, heading for a fifth straight weekly gain and its strongest five-week run since late January 2023. The stock sits less than 1% below a $2 trillion market valuation. The catalyst: growing adoption of Meta's AI application Muse and a companion device integrated with the AI agent Charm, particularly among younger users.
"Still like it. We're fully invested."
That sentiment, captured from market commentary, reflects a broader willingness among portfolio managers to look past macro headwinds when AI revenue narratives stay intact. Traders now assign a 71% probability that the Federal Reserve will hike rates by at least 25 basis points in October, up from roughly 50% earlier this week, according to CME Group's FedWatch Tool.
Fed officials including New York Fed President John Williams, Kansas City Fed President Jeffrey Schmid, and Cleveland Fed President Beth Hammack are scheduled to speak later Friday. August durable goods data is due at 8:30 a.m. ET. Both events could test whether AI enthusiasm can keep absorbing rate and energy shocks.
Geopolitics remains the wild card. Brent crude hovering above $100 reflects prolonged conflicts involving Iran and Ukraine, plus soaring government debt. A report that U.S. and Iranian negotiators are exploring a phased path out of war, including Tehran reopening the Strait of Hormuz and Washington lifting its economic blockade, offered some relief but no resolution.
Elsewhere, People rose 9.4% after a report that MGM Resorts International was discussing a bid for the online services company. The benchmark S&P 500 and tech-heavy Nasdaq remain on track for weekly gains, though the advance is narrow and dependent on a handful of AI-linked names.
The tension is straightforward. AI capital expenditure keeps climbing, as the Akamai-Anthropic deal shows, but the cost of money keeps rising too. If the Fed hikes in October, the discount rate applied to long-duration AI projects will climb further. For now, investors are betting that AI adoption curves, from Meta's consumer apps to enterprise cloud contracts, will outrun the tightening cycle. That bet has held for five weeks. Whether it survives a 5.1% Treasury yield and triple-digit oil is the question Friday's session will begin to answer.
