Shares in Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. surged 5% to a fresh all-time high on Friday after the island’s regulator said it plans to loosen limits on funds’ allocations to single stocks.

Under the revised framework, domestic equity funds and actively managed ETFs focused exclusively on Taiwanese stocks will be allowed to allocate up to 25% of their assets to any listed firm that carries a weighting above 10% on the Taiwan Stock Exchange. 

A long-standing rule had capped fund managers’ allocations to a single company at 10% of their portfolio’s net asset value.

TSMC, whose shares had a hit a record high on Thursday as well, last week reported a 58% increase in first-quarter profit, beating estimates as the boom in artificial intelligence drives demands for chips.

TSMC’s net income of 572.48 billion new Taiwanese dollars for the three months ended in March represented a fourth consecutive quarter of record profits. 

The company is Asia’s most valuable technology firm, and produces semiconductors that are used across devices from consumer gadgets to large-scale data centers.

The world’s largest contract chipmaker continues to see robust demand for cutting-edge chips from major clients such as Apple an, while also benefiting from the rapid expansion of AI, manufacturing advanced processors designed by companies like Nvidia — now its largest customer.

Europe’s biggest economy was set for a rebound, but now it’s being hammered by soaring energy costs caused by the Iran war, prompting the federal government to halve growth forecasts.

Germany’s flagship fiscal stimulus package is in the spotlight as ministers scramble to cushion the impact of higher bills.

Before the war, the country had been powered by rising industrial orders, dropping inventories, and improving sentiment, thanks mainly to fiscal spending on defense and infrastructure.

But higher energy prices and supply chain risks are “spoiling the German growth party before it even started,” said Carsten Brzeski, global head of macro research at ING.

The Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy this week slashed its growth forecast for 2026 to 0.5% from 1%, while its 2027 forecast was cut from 1.3% to 0.9%. Inflation is now projected to reach 2.7% this year and 2.8% the next.

Brzeski noted that industrial production was already “stuttering” before the war, sliding 0.3% month-on-month in February and printing flat on an annual basis.

But now the Iran conflict has sent business sentiment into freefall.

Intel’s latest earnings report showed big demand for central processing units, or CPUs, as companies rush to build out their artificial intelligence capabilities, sending its stock surging. The numbers led investors to scoop up shares of another major chipmaker: Advanced Micro Devices.

AMD shares soared more than 12% on Friday as Wall Street analysts were caught off guard by Intel’s CPU performance — which they believe will translate to other big CPU makers.

“We figured CPUs were the next big bottleneck, but Intel’s results indicate that is already translating to very significant upside,” D.A. Davidson analyst Gil Luria wrote in a Friday note. “The CPU is reinserting itself as an indispensable foundation of the AI era, and the once sleepy CPU market has taken off as agentic workloads shift compute needs” beyond graphics processing units produced by companies such as Nvidia.

Luria upgraded AMD to buy from neutral and hiked his 2026 revenue and gross profit margins. He also hiked his price target on the stock to $375, implying upside of 22% from Thursday’s close.

This comes off the back of Intel also issuing stronger-than-expected guidance for the second quarter. Other analysts on the Street took notice of the CPU surge as well.

“Intel now expects double digit server CPU unit growth in 2026, up from their prior expectations of only slight growth six months ago,” Citi analyst Atif Malik wrote Friday. He upgraded Intel stock to buy from neutral.

Wall Street sees CPU makers and data center gear providers improving as a group, on the Intel news, with AMD front and center.

“Based on signs of better participation in high AI infrastructure growth, we are significantly increasing our price target to align INTC’s target multiple with the company’s AI infrastructure peers AMD, MRVL, CRDO, and ALAB (all Buy rated),” Suji Desilva of Roth wrote Friday.

Barclays’ Tom O’Malley, meanwhile, wondered whether Intel could lose market share to rival AMD.

“Our downside case of $40 is based upon 47x our downside CY27 PF EPS of $0.85, which assumes greater share loss to AMD,” he wrote, citing other factors as well. Intel traded around $81 early Friday.

European stock markets finished lower on Friday, as uncertainty over U.S.-Iran peace talks weighed on investor sentiment.

The pan-European Stoxx 600 closed the day down 0.6%, with most regional sectors and major bourses in negative territory. Technology stocks led the gains, rising 1.4%, while mining stocks saw the largest losses, sliding 1.7%.

Novo Nordisk stock rose more than 5% on Friday after prescription data from its chief rival Eli Lilly’s newly launched weight loss pill showed Novo’s medicine kept momentum even after competition entered the market.

Lilly’s pill, Foundayo, launched earlier this month, while Novo’s Wegovy pill launched in early January in the U.S. Foundayo generated about 3,700 prescriptions in its second week after launch, according to IQVIA data cited by analysts. By comparison, Novo’s Wegovy pill drew over 18,000 prescriptions in its second week.

Shares in SAP surged 4.7% after the German multinational enterprise software giant announced a rise in operating profits of almost 17%, and a 19% jump in cloud revenues, in its latest quarterly earnings.

SAP CEO Christian Klein told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Europe” on Friday that the company is “uniquely positioned to win in business AI” adding that it will “double down and reinvest” more money into AI innovation.

Renault shares, meanwhile, went into reverse, sliding 3.6% after the French carmaker said its first-quarter sales were 3.3% lower than the same three-month period last year. Its group revenues rose 7.3% in the period, however, reaching 12.5 billion euros ($14.6 billion).

Investor attention remains focused on developments in the Middle East. On Thursday, U.S. President Donald Trump told reporters, “don’t rush me,” when questioned on a long-term deal with Iran. He also said he won’t put a “timetable” on when the war will end.

Overnight, it was reported that U.S. forces had boarded and searched another tanker thought to be carrying Iranian oil through the Indian Ocean.

Oil prices edged higher on Friday, with global benchmark Brent crude futures adding 0.5% to reach $105.65 a barrel, while U.S. West Texas Intermediate futures were marginally higher at $96.12, a 0.4% increase.

Back in Europe, investors monitored another flurry of corporate earnings, with Eni, Orange, and Volvo among the firms updating shareholders on their finances.

U.K. retail sales increased 0.7% in March, according to new Office for National Statistics data, outweighing the 0.1% forecast by economists. In Germany, meanwhile, the Ifo Institute’s monthly business climate index fell to 84.4 in April — its lowest level since May 2020, at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic — suggesting the Iran war is now weighing heavily on the country’s economic outlook.

French consumer confidence in April dipped to its lowest level in almost three years, according to data published by France’s…

Regeneron Pharmaceuticals will make its newly approved gene therapy for a rare, genetic form of hearing loss available for free in the U.S. The company hasn’t yet decided how much it will charge in other countries, Regeneron CEO Leonard Schleifer told CNBC on Friday.

“We haven’t set a price yet, but they should pay their fair share outside the United States,” Schleifer said in an interview with CNBC’s Becky Quick. “In the United States, we’re giving it away for free.”

Regeneron on Thursday announced it would make the therapy available for free in the U.S. alongside a larger deal with the Trump administration around drug pricing. President Donald Trump, for years, has argued that Americans are unfairly paying more for drugs than other wealthy nations and, as a result, is subsidizing innovation.

Regeneron’s gene therapy Otarmeni treats a rare disease where a faulty OTOF gene limits production of a protein that transmits sound signals in the ear. Otarmeni delivers a working copy of the gene. In a clinical trial, 16 of 20, or 80%, of people who received the gene therapy experienced improvements to their hearing.

About 50 babies a year are estimated to be born with the condition in the U.S. Because it’s so rare, the gene therapy wasn’t expected to be a financial boon for Regeneron. Piper Sandler analysts estimated peak sales of $130 million.

Schleifer said Regeneron decided to make the treatment available for free in the U.S., “to show who we are.”

The treatment was approved under the Food and Drug Administration’s newly created National Priority Voucher program, which aims to accelerate reviews of drugs that align with U.S. national health priorities.

Gene therapies can cost millions of dollars, and European countries have balked at the price tags in the past.

At a time when Hollywood is torn between fear of artificial intelligence stealing jobs and the pressure to cut costs, a new kind of hybrid production studio is launching with the latest AI tools.

Innovative Dreams is a new production services company, backed by Amazon Web Services and Luma, a generative AI startup, that combines cameras and a giant LED wall on a soundstage with tools to apply AI from pre-production, to shooting, into post-production. By combining virtual production, motion capture, and a variety of AI tools including Luma, Google’s Nano Banana, and Bytedance’s SeeDream, Innovative Dreams says it can significantly cut down both on costs and time.

“We visually design and explore the world, then we take the footage that we filmed and start mapping that performance capture to these digital assets,” CEO Jon Erwin explained. “You’re fusing a performance with a piece of [digital] wardrobe that you like. The cool thing is the actor’s performance, the camera, the lens choice– that’s all getting through.” Erwin says this approach merges a traditional filmmaking process into a digital world, rather than replacing cameras and actors with prompts.

Innovative Dreams was born of Erwin’s production studio, Wonder Project, after he used AI to produce historical scenes in far-flung locales for its biggest show, “House of David.” (The show is available via Amazon Prime Video.) With Innovative Dreams, Erwin is going all-in on the potential for AI and virtual production to create films and shows with massive scale, without ever leaving a sound stage — and he aims to keep production in Southern California.

“It was a game-changer in House of David, so we came back from that experience thinking that other people must have been doing the same thing,” Erwin said. “We quickly realized that people weren’t.” 

The first project using this new workflow is an upcoming three-part series called “The Old Stories: Moses,” starring Ben Kingsley, set to debut this spring. The three-episode series, shot in a single week on the virtual soundstage, shows the actors in 40 locations, by putting footage from around the world into the screens in the production facility. Erwin says it would have taken a traditional production five or six weeks to shoot –and there wouldn’t have been the budget to go to so many locations.

AI video generation requires such massive amounts of computing capacity, Innovative Dreams brought on AWS as an investor and partner; AWS provides cloud and AI infrastructure to power the real-time hybrid production tools used on set, part of its broader effort to work with the entertainment industry.

“We’re providing the … tools that are going to allow for filmmakers to be able to work in ways that they simply couldn’t have been able to before and produce content much faster, much cheaper, and collaborate in ways that…

The AI-driven data center boom in Pennsylvania — which includes a $20 billion investment from Amazon — is leading to political angst in districts in the Keystone State that could help decide control of the U.S. House.

The four competitive House races are in the eastern part of the state, where Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro is focusing his data center expansion plans. Republicans represent all four districts and are looking to not only hold on to their own seats in November’s election but to retain control of the House, where the party holds a five-seat majority.

Political analysts say the data center dynamic could harm incumbents, who will take the brunt of public backlash for unpopular development.

All four districts are considered in play by the Cook Political Report with Amy Walter, which rates every congressional race. The 7th, 8th and 10th Districts are all listed as “toss-ups” by the Cook Report. Cook rates the 1st District — in Bucks County, north of Philadelphia — as “likely Republican,” so it’s also considered to be in play. It’s represented by Brian Fitzpatrick and is set to see construction from Amazon’s infusion of cash.

Chris Borick, director of the Muhlenberg College Institute of Public Opinion in Allentown, Pennsylvania, said bipartisan backlash around data centers has further complicated an already difficult environment for Republicans in competitive districts.

“They’re really caught between counteracting forces,” he said. “A lot of these folks are in uncomfortable, challenging positions to begin with, and [the issue of] data centers has layered another challenge.”

Borick said a rise in data center opposition has created a tightrope for Republican incumbents to walk as they aim to balance President Donald Trump‘s energy agenda and need to support AI growth with their constituents’ frustration with and opposition to the data center buildout. 

Rep. Scott Perry, R-Pa., whose 10th District win in 2024 had one of the closest margins in the country, said that while he’s engaged on national energy policy, he largely views data center regulation as out of his purview.

“At the end of the day, most of this stuff is … local issues for local municipalities,” he said. “As a federal guy, you know, I don’t get into local zoning and building and what municipalities choose or don’t choose. Those are local decisions.”

In the swing 7th and 8th Districts, Republican Reps. Ryan Mackenzie and Rob Bresnahan, respectively, ousted incumbent Democrats in 2024.

Data centers are being built across the U.S., fanning out from concentrations in longtime hotspots such as…

Semiconductors are a runaway train — up 17 of the past 18 sessions — and options traders are buying increasingly expensive call options to chase the rally higher.

The VanEck Semiconductor ETF (SMH) tracking the sector is up more than 30% this month after a 5% pop Friday, and implied volatility is rising alongside the price, meaning it’s getting more expensive to trade options around the group.

The latest catalyst was Intel earnings overnight, which sent shares of the stock up 23%, a rally that almost triples the expected move implied by the options market on Thursday. Intel’s market value suprassed $400 billion for the first time since the Dotcom Bubble in 2000. Advanced Micro Devices, one of Intel’s longtime competitors, surged in unison, adding 15%.

Options signals look notably bullish in memory stocks like Micron and Sandisk, which posted enormous gains over the past year due to demand from AI data centers. Calls outnumber puts near 2:1 in those stocks, and total call premiums paid in those stocks are at least four times bigger than in puts.

One notable exception is the biggest of the group – Nvidia. Implied vol in Jensen Huang’s AI leader is lower than in the SMH ETF, probably because the stock has been much slower moving, sitting about $3 below all-time highs made in October.

At least one sizable trader took advantage of those relatively cheaper options, buying 7,500 $230-strike calls expiring May 15 – a $413,000 transaction betting on a 13% ramp from here. Call volumes in NVDA are about three times that of puts. The company is set to report earnings on May 20.

The Army Special Forces soldier criminally charged in connection with making hugely profitable bets on Polymarket related to the U.S. military raid that captured Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro was released Friday on an unsecured $250,000 bond after appearing in federal court in Raleigh, North Carolina.

Master Sgt. Gannon Ken Van Dyke was ordered to appear Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Manhattan, where he has been indicted on wire fraud and other charges related to allegedly using classified information about the planned operation to win nearly $410,000 from the bets and then trying to cover up the scheme.

Van Dyke, who has served in the Army since 2008, was arrested Thursday in North Carolina, where he is based at Fort Bragg.

Kalshi, Polymarket’s leading competitor in the prediction markets sector, confirmed on Friday that it had blocked Van Dyke from opening a Kalshi account. Reuters first reported that Kalshi had blocked Van Dyke’s attempt to create an account.

Elisabeth Diana, a spokeswoman for Kalshi, said she could not give details of when the 38-year-old Van Dyke tried to open an account or why he was prevented from doing so.

But a civil lawsuit filed against Van Dyke on Thursday by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission alleges that on Dec. 24, he “submitted an application to open an account at a CFTC-licensed and regulated designated contract market, not affiliated with Polymarket, which allows U.S.-based users to trade event contracts.”

Kalshi is such a licensed market.

“At the time, the DCM offered event contracts related to Venezuela, including event contracts related to the removal of Maduro,” the CFTC lawsuit says.

“Van Dyke was unable to open his account at the DCM, despite contacting the DCM’s customer support chat on or around December 26, 27, and 28, 2025.”

Van Dyke allegedly opened his Polymarket account on Dec. 27, nearly three weeks after he became involved in planning and executing the Jan. 3 raid in Caracas that ended with U.S. Special Forces capturing Maduro and his wife and putting them on a Navy ship to be sent to the U.S., prosecutors said. The couple face federal drug charges in the same court where Van Dyke was recently indicted, prosecutors said.

In the week leading up to the raid, Van Dyke used his Polymarket account to make a series of wagers on contracts on questions of whether U.S. forces would be in Venezuela by Jan. 31, whether Maduro would be out of office by that date and on related questions, the indictment alleges.

He allegedly wagered about $33,000 in more than a dozen bets, according to the indictment, which is being prosecuted by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York.

Nvidia shares closed at a record on Friday for the first time since October, pushing the company’s market cap past $5 trillion, as investors piled into the AI chip trade ahead of earnings next week from tech’s hyperscalers.

The stock rose 4.3% to close at $208.27. Nvidia is up more than 14-fold since the end of 2022, driven by soaring demand for artificial intelligence services and models. Nvidia’s graphics processing units are relied on by Google, Microsoft, Meta and Amazon as well as model developers OpenAI and Anthropic.

Friday’s rally was sparked by better-than-expected earnings late Thursday from chipmaker Intel, which has largely been left out of the AI market until recently. Intel shares spiked 24%, their best performance since 1987.

Advanced Micro Devices, which competes with Nvidia and Intel, jumped 14%, while mobile device chipmaker Qualcomm climbed 11%.

Investors had been pulling back on large-cap technology stocks as oil prices were skyrocketing due to the Iran war and supply chain disruptions that followed. But wide swaths of technology are back in favor of late, with demand for AI infrastructure showing no signs of slowing.

The Nasdaq is now up 15% in April, headed for its best month since April 2020.

Nvidia does face increasing competition in AI. Alphabet, a major Nvidia customer, announced new chips that will try to take on Nvidia’s offerings when they become available to cloud customers later this year.

WATCH: AMD likely to have same gains as Intel