Sector Update: Tech Stocks Gain Friday Afternoon

01:47 PM EDT, 09/25/2026 (MT Newswires) -- Tech stocks were higher Friday afternoon, with the State Street Technology Select Sector SPDR ETF (XLK) rising 1% and the State Street SPDR S&P Semiconductor ETF (XSD) adding 3%. The Philadelphia Semiconductor index rose 1.6%. In corporate news, Akamai Technologies (AKAM) shares jumped 5.6% after the company signed an $11.6 billion, seven-year commitment with Anthropic to support its CPU workload demands using Akamai Cloud's infrastructure. Microsoft (MSFT) has introduced three new capabilities to its Copilot app, namely Home, Code, and Autopilot, it said on Friday. Its shares rose 3.6%. Nvidia (NVDA) and Microsoft-backed AI data center developer Nscale raised $3.36 billion in a pre-IPO financing round led by Third Point, Bloomberg reported. Nvidia shares were up 0.1%.