Stock futures inch higher ahead of key earnings results from Nvidia: Live updates

Stock futures were slightly higher Wednesday ahead of a key earnings report from Nvidia.

Futures tied to the Dow Jones Industrial Average edged up 54 points, or 0.1%. S&P 500 futures added 0.1%, and Nasdaq 100 futures gained about 0.2%.

Major stock averages rose on Tuesday as fears about artificial intelligence disruption across several industries dissipated. The S&P 500 finished the session higher by nearly 0.8%, while the Nasdaq Composite jumped about 1%. The 30-stock Dow gained 370 points, or about 0.8%.

Lifting the broader market was a nearly 9% gain in Advanced Micro Devices, which rose after Meta Platforms announced a multiyear deal with the semiconductor company. Software and cybersecurity stocks also saw a relief rally in the regular session after Anthropic launched a new connectors and plugins for its knowledge worker tool, Claude Cowork, that will allow companies to connect the AI tool to their existing apps such as Google Drive. Claude Cowork rattled the software sector in recent weeks as investors feared the tool would disrupt incumbent software vendors’ businesses.

The iShares Expanded Tech-Software Sector ETF (IGV) added 1.9% on Tuesday, though it remains down by more than 25% this year.

“I think that it’s been indiscriminate to a point where, yes, it’s gotten a little irrational … there’s room here for a little bit of a correction upward in some of these names,” said Liz Thomas, head of investment strategy at SoFi, said Tuesday on CNBC’s “Closing Bell,” referring to the plunge in software this year.

Tuesday’s moves come ahead of Nvidia’s quarterly earnings report, as well as results from software giant Salesforce and Snowflake, due after Wednesday’s market close. Results from Nvidia come at a time when investors are recalibrating lofty tech stock valuations and growing skeptical on hyperscalers’ high AI capital expenditures.

For Thomas, Nvidia’s results could still be make-or-break for the direction of the U.S. stock market, but they have overall slightly diminished in importance given the recent panic in software and attention on rapidly developing AI tools, such as Claude.

“Numerically, the importance of Nvidia still remains … They need to beat probably; they need to have positive guidance in order for market sentiment to remain intact,” Thomas told CNBC. She added, however, that “I don’t think we’re hinging as much on it” compared to previous quarters.

Separately, investors this week are keeping an eye on tensions between the U.S. and Iran. Over the past weekend, President Donald Trump had threatened to hike global tariffs to 15%, but a 10% duty on global imports was implemented on Tuesday.