03:44 PM EDT, 04/08/2026 (MT Newswires) -- Tech stocks were higher late Wednesday afternoon, with the State Street Technology Select Sector SPDR ETF (XLK) rising 2.8% and the State Street SPDR S&P Semiconductor ETF (XSD) climbing 5.2%.

The Philadelphia Semiconductor index gained 6%.

In corporate news, Firefly Aerospace ( FLY ) and Nvidia ( NVDA ) said Wednesday they collaborated to enable rapid on-orbit data analysis for a lunar imaging service using a specialized computing module. Nvidia ( NVDA ) shares rose 2.1%, and Firefly added 6.6%.

Meta Platforms ( META ) shares jumped 6.4% after it launched Muse Spark, a new multimodal reasoning model and the first in its Muse family, as the company steps up efforts to build what it calls "personal superintelligence."

Micron Technology ( MU ) and Sandisk ( SNDK ) shares gained after fellow memory chipmaker Samsung Electronics projected increased Q1 sales and profits. Micron shares rose 7.3%, and Sandisk ( SNDK ) climbed about 9%.

Elon Musk on Tuesday amended his lawsuit against Microsoft ( MSFT )-backed (MSFT) OpenAI to request that any damages awarded be directed to the organization's charitable arm rather than to himself, as the high-profile case heads toward trial later this month in Oakland, California, The Wall Street Journal reported. Musk is seeking more than $150 billion in damages from OpenAI and its partner Microsoft ( MSFT ), alleging the company departed from its original nonprofit mission and misled him as an early donor while shifting toward a for-profit structure. Microsoft ( MSFT ) shares were fractionally lower.