U.S. stock markets opened slightly higher with the Dow Jones up 0.14%, S&P 500 up 0.22%, and Nasdaq up 0.46%. Accenture surged 17.8% on strong fourth-quarter results and positive guidance, while Google rose 2.4% following its Gemini 4 AI model launch. Micron Technology declined 1.8% after missing earnings expectations.
Micron Technology CEO Sanjay Mehrotra predicts that physical AI, particularly in autonomous vehicles, will drive significant storage demand growth beyond data centers. Level 4 and above autonomous vehicles require over 200GB of memory and several TB of storage, positioning physical AI as a major market opportunity for the company.