US Markets Overnight: Dell yeah: AI servers steal the show as the Dow cracks 51K

US Markets Overnight saw old school Dell steal the show!

The Friday session on May 29 US time delivered one of those days where a single earnings report rewired the entire market’s mood. Dell Technologies posted a quarter so absurdly strong, up 33% in a single session, that it turned what could have been a sleepy pre-weekend drift into a genuine AI spending victory lap.

The Anthropic story added fuel: the Claude maker closed its Series H at a staggering $965 billion valuation, officially overtaking OpenAI as the world’s most valuable AI startup. Meanwhile, Microsoft ripped 5.4% higher on the back of analyst estimates tying its Anthropic partnership to a potential $43 billion annual revenue windfall by 2030, while Alphabet sagged 2.5% as investors questioned whether Google’s AI lead is narrowing faster than the share price reflects. US markets overnight were a tale of two AI camps: the builders, and the ones being built around.

The Dow cracks 51,000 even if the mood was complicated

The Dow Jones Industrial Average was the undisputed star in US markets overnight, surging 363 points, or 0.7%, to close at 51,032, punching above 51,000 for the first time in history. The S&P 500 added 0.2% to 7,580.06 and the Nasdaq Composite rose 0.2% to 26,972.62, both notching fresh record closes. All three hit intraday all-time highs as well, marking the S&P 500’s ninth consecutive week of gains. The Russell 2000 gained 0.6%, a quiet nod to the broadening rally that keeps defying the concentration doomers.

Gold climbed 0.9% to around $4,575 an ounce as the dollar softened, with the DXY easing 0.1% to approximately 98.9. Bitcoin hovered near $73,600, broadly flat and waiting for its next narrative. WTI crude fell 1.6% to around $87.50 a barrel, its lowest in six weeks, after reports that the US and Iran have reached a preliminary agreement to extend their ceasefire by 60 days and begin clearing mines from the Strait of Hormuz. Brent dropped around 2% to $91.20, putting oil on track for its steepest monthly decline since 2020.

The US 10-year Treasury yield eased to about 4.44%, near three-week lows, helped by softer-than-expected monthly PCE readings that arrived on Thursday: headline and core came in at 0.4% and 0.2% month-over-month respectively, although the annual rate of 3.8% remains stubbornly above the Fed’s target. The VIX fell 2.7% to 15.3, because apparently nothing scares this market anymore.

Microsoft threw a party, but Alphabet wasn’t invited

In US markets overnight Microsoft was the runaway Mag 7 winner, closing at $450 (+5.4%) after HSBC estimated that its Anthropic partnership could generate $43 billion in annual revenue by 2030, assuming Azure captures 30% of Anthropic’s projected compute spend. That number, ambitious as it is, gave investors exactly the kind of AI monetisation narrative they’ve been craving from Microsoft for months.

Alphabet was the session’s biggest Mag 7 casualty, closing at $376 (-2.5%). The catalyst cocktail was unpleasant: Anthropic’s Claude Opus 4.8 benchmark results reportedly outperformed Google’s Gemini 3.1 Pro, the DOJ charged a Google engineer over the use of proprietary information, and the sheer size of Anthropic’s $965 billion valuation raises fresh questions about concentration risk in Alphabet’s cloud backlog. None of these headlines alone is thesis-breaking, but together they made for a rough arvo session.

Nvidia closed at $211 (-1.5%), giving back some ground despite the broader chip rally, as the stock continued to digest its blowout May 20 earnings and the gravitational pull of a $5.2 trillion market cap. Tesla slipped to $436 (-1.4%), weighed down by ongoing scepticism about its robotaxi timeline and a stock that, at 400 times earnings, needs every promise to land on schedule.

Amazon dipped to $271 (-1.2%), unremarkable in a session dominated by software and AI infrastructure. Meta held up reasonably well at $633 (-0.4%), buoyed by its AI advertising engine humming along nicely. Apple was the definition of a non-event at $312 (-0.1%), flat enough to suggest punters had other things on their minds.

The AI infrastructure play is alive and kicking

The broader semiconductor space had a strong day in US markets overnight. Micron surged 5%, with DA Davidson lifting its price target to $1,500 and Susquehanna going even further to $1,750. The memory giant recently cracked $1 trillion in market cap for the first time and shows no signs of slowing. Qualcomm rose 3%, also hitting all-time highs after ByteDance reportedly placed a massive AI chip order.

Dell’s 33% moonshot was technically an AI server infrastructure play, but it dragged the entire hardware complex higher. Oracle gained over 6% as AI software demand reinforced the cloud narrative. The SOX index has been on a record-breaking tear throughout May, and Friday’s session kept the streak alive, even as some of the semiconductor names that led earlier in the month, like AMD and Broadcom, took a breather. As noted in our previous coverage on Stocks Down Under, the chip rally has become so relentless that the new risk may not be not missing it, but over-staying the welcome.

One thing worth watching

The US-Iran story is the one to watch this weekend. Reports of a tentative 60-day ceasefire extension and the potential reopening of the Strait of Hormuz sent oil tumbling on Friday, but the deal still requires Trump’s approval, and Iranian state media says nothing has been finalised. If a deal materialises, expect energy prices to leg down further, which would take pressure off inflation and give the Fed one less reason to consider hiking. If it falls apart, oil could snap back hard, and the whole inflation narrative resets. Australian investors with exposure to energy stocks or commodities should keep one eye on the Sunday night headlines.