U.S. stocks closed higher on Friday, buoyed by a rally in megacap growth stocks following robust quarterly results from technology heavyweights Alphabet and Microsoft in addition to moderate inflation data. Investors cheered Alphabet's first-ever dividend, its $70 billion stock buyback program, and better-than-expected first-quarter results. Microsoft shares rose after its third-quarter revenue and profit exceeded Wall Street estimates, driven by gains from artificial intelligence (AI) adoption across its cloud services.
These AI-related stocks rebounded on the back of massive AI spending plans from big tech giants.
Alphabet Inc's Google on Friday asked a federal court in Virginia to reject a U.S. government lawsuit accusing the advertising and search company of anticompetitive practices in the online advertising marketplace. The government, which filed the ad tech lawsuit in January 2023 along with eight states, accused the company of abusing its dominance of the digital advertising business and argued that it should be forced to sell its ad manager suite. Google’s online advertising network, which includes ad manager, brought in 12% of the company’s revenue in 2021.