There's a big shift happening in Big Tech as the AI transition enters a new era.

Why it matters: Investors are changing the way they price these superstar stocks, but judging by what happened in the market yesterday, they are not totally sure how to do so.

Where it stands: Stock markets surged yesterday on hopes that the war would end, a familiar pattern by now after more than a month of conflict. Investors perked up on two things:

• A report that Iran's president is open to ending the fighting.
• President Trump told the New York Post that the U.S. is not going to be in Iran "too much longer" and that he believes the Strait of Hormuz will "automatically open."

By the numbers: That's all the investors needed to hear, apparently. The S&P 500 posted its biggest one-day gain since last May. The beleaguered Nasdaq surged 3.6%.

• Meta closed up 6.7%, Alphabet, 5.1% and Amazon, 3.6%.
• The Mag 7 jumped 4.5%.

Reality check: It was still a lousy quarter (see chart below).

The big picture: Underneath the volatility driven by the Iran war, there's a wholesale disruption underway in how the tech business works.

• For nearly 20 years, companies like Google and Meta were "asset-light," software players with relatively lean infrastructure.
• At minimal cost, they were able to give a product away for free to billions of consumers and sell access to those consumers to advertisers.

"Where prior waves of technology scaled primarily through code, the current phase scales through capital, requiring infrastructure, power, cooling and compute," BlackRock analysts wrote in a note this week.

Friction point: To fund this new era, companies are borrowing money — by issuing more bonds.

• And investors are starting to price in the change, says Mike Treacy, vice president of risk at Apex, a clearinghouse. "The market is starting to take note of all this capital expenditure."

Follow the money: This is where the story gets kind of wild — and correlated to what's happening with the Iran war, oil prices and inflation expectations.

• Now that these tech companies are financing their spending with borrowing, not simply all the cash they have lying around, their stock prices are more sensitive to shifts in interest rates, Treacy explains.
• So tech stocks took a hit when rates rose last week, as investors started pricing in inflation risks because of the war. And when interest rates fell earlier this week, tech stocks went back up.

"The most important thing in the market right now," Treacy says, "is this interplay between equities, oil and rates."

The S&P 500 closed down 4.6% for the three months that ended yesterday — its worst performance since 2023.

Why it matters: The war and the AI transition dragged the index down.

• The Mag 7 was down 13% for the quarter

What to watch: Q2, baby!

Speaking of AI capex, spending on data centers is surging to levels that rival investments in energy, according to a new report by Norway-based Rystad Energy.

The big picture: The race to build AI infrastructure is turning data centers into one of the world's largest energy investment categories — with major implications for power demand and emissions.

By the numbers: The U.S. accounted for 42% of the installed capacity of data centers in 2025 — double that of mainland China, the second-place market, Rystad found.

The intrigue: The chart also shows that renewable energy, despite facing criticism from Trump, continues to tick upward on a global basis.

What we're watching: Rystad sees potential risks ahead for the AI boom.

The bottom line: "The various constraints, supply chain delays and disruptions are not likely to be solved in the next few years, which carries a chance of a further spike in prices."

Women are less likely to use AI at work — and even when they do, they get less recognition for the effort, finds a new survey from Lean In, the women's advocacy group.

Why it matters: Right now, AI ability is the skill many employers say they value most.

• Down the line, this recognition gap could exacerbate existing gender pay and promotion inequalities, Lean In founder Sheryl Sandberg tells Axios.

Zoom in: 78% of men said they have used AI for work, compared with 73% of women, per a survey the group conducted in early March among 1,000 U.S. adults age 18 and over.

• Among those using AI, 18% of women said they've been praised for doing so, compared with 27% of men.
• And 30% of women said they'd been encouraged to use AI by their manager, compared with 37% of men.

Between the lines: This is just one small survey, but it does follow similar research from 2025 that found that women software engineers who use AI are viewed as less competent than men.

Zoom out: It's the same biases seen in the workplace for years, playing out in a new arena, Sandberg says, pointing to other research that finds men are more likely to be praised for effort. Women are more apt to be criticized.

• That edge men have in getting recognition for experimenting with new AI tools can enhance their reputation, performance evaluations, and opportunities for advancement, the report says.
• "These small gaps will become really big over time if we don't call attention to them right now," Sandberg tells Axios.

The bottom line: Sandberg's advice is familiar: Lean in. This time, on AI.