CNBC Daily Open: Time to look at AI-adjacent plays

This report is from today’s CNBC Daily Open, our international markets newsletter. CNBC Daily Open brings investors up to speed on everything they need to know, no matter where they are. Like what you see? You can subscribe here.

Falling from highs
U.S. stocks mostly fell Wednesday. The S&P 500 lost 0.19% and the Dow Jones Industrial Average slipped 0.7%, after scaling record highs earlier in the session. The Nasdaq Composite closed near the flatline. Europe’s regional Stoxx 600 index retreated 0.11%. The Stoxx Europe 600 Bank Index fell 0.73% as investors monitored UniCredit’s potential merger with Commerzbank.

Google vs. Microsoft
Google on Wednesday filed an antitrust complaint with the European Commission, the executive arm of the European Union, over Microsoft’s practices in the cloud computing industry. Google alleged that Microsoft employs unfair licensing contracts to “lock in” clients and exert control over the cloud market.

Done selling Nvidia
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang is done selling the company’s stock for now. In March, Huang set out a plan to sell up to six million Nvidia shares by first quarter of 2025. He has hit that threshold ahead of schedule. Separately, AI chips like those Nvidia manufactures could face a global shortage as demand ramps up, according to a Bain & Company report.

Turning VR into reality
Meta took another step in making virtual reality part of our everyday life. The company’s Reality Labs division announced the Quest 3S, its latest VR headset, which starts at $299 and goes on sale Oct. 15. Meta also showed off a prototype of augmented reality glasses called Orion. 

[PRO] It’s time for you to buy
That little green bird — Duolingo’s logo — can seem a tad annoying when it reminds you for the hundredth time to practice your Japanese, but analysts are taking a shine to it. Duolingo, among other stocks like Hewlett Packard Enterprise and Roblox, is one of the names on the “buy” list of Wall Street banks. 

The initial frenzy in generative artificial intelligence was triggered when OpenAI released ChatGPT in 2022. Institutions poured billions into OpenAI.

While OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, is not listed publicly, several companies have gained immensely from the generative AI boom that it sparked. 

(Speaking of OpenAI, the company’s CTO Mira Murati announced Wednesday she’s leaving the company. OpenAI is also planning to restructure to a for-profit business.)

Nvidia was the first beneficiary of gen AI. Its stock rocketed in 2023, a year after ChatGPT was released, when it became clear the semiconductor company’s chips were the brains behind chatbots.

Then Big Tech companies jumped on the bandwagon. Microsoft, Meta and Google-parent Alphabet released their own versions of chatbots and gen-AI-infused tools. Those features helped bump up share prices, though of course it’s difficult to attribute a single cause to stock movement.

It seems the tailwinds of AI are starting to propel a third wave of AI-adjacent companies forward.

If chips are the brains of AI, then data centers are its body. Hewlett Packard Enterprise rose more than 5% after Barclays upgraded the company on strong AI data center demand. And recall Oracle’s surge this year, driven mainly by the company’s AI cloud services powered by its data centers.

Next in line to be juiced by AI appear to be energy companies.

Oracle’s founder Larry Ellison said a new data center that the company is designing “will rely on three modular nuclear reactors.”

Vistra Corp, a power company based in Texas, jumped almost 6% on expectations the company will power an AI data center with one of its nuclear plants. Likewise, Constellation Energy popped about 22% Friday after it announced plans to restart a nuclear plant and sell the power to Microsoft.

All that is to say: The AI wave will continue rippling throughout the ocean for some time. Big Tech or semiconductors are juicy catches, but a wider net might reel in other prizes.

 – CNBC’s Kif Leswing, Jonathan Vanian, Jordan Novet, Brian Evans and Jesse Pound contributed to this story.