So long, farewell, Charter Communications, Cognizant Technology Solutions, Insmed, Verisk Analytics and Zscaler.

This morning, the Nasdaq-100 is getting its quarterly rebalance. Firms whose market cap has fallen off the list of the 100 largest non-financial companies on the world’s second-largest stock exchange get officially booted, while new ones take their place. That means millions of retirement and investment accounts, not to mention pension plans, that hold any of the more than 200 funds tracking the Nasdaq-100 are about to take on more exposure to the artificial intelligence (AI) trade, whether they want to or not.

Introducing…

Because it tracks non-financial companies, the Nasdaq-100 has become something of a proxy for the tech sector, even if biotech, consumer goods and telecommunications are also represented. Today’s five new additions won’t do much to change that: Astera Labs, CoreWeave, Nebius Group, and Teradyne are all deeply enmeshed in the AI economy. Only Rocket Lab, a rocket and spacecraft manufacturer, stands out.

CoreWeave, which went public in March 2025, is the most famous of the new bunch. The GPU cloud provider, up nearly 65% this year, is highly leveraged with some $17 billion in debt and has taken the unique step of pledging its advanced Nvidia hardware as collateral. But it also has a massive order backlog, something that’s led many to view it as undervalued. Amsterdam-based Nebius, which rebranded after it split from Russian technology giant Yandex, is another GPU cloud provider.

Astera Labs makes the connectivity chips and software that allow all the moving parts of AI data centers to work together, while Teradyne manufactures testing equipment used to validate advanced semiconductors. Which brings us to the one non-AI newb:

• Rocket Lab builds and launches rockets and satellites, and its shares have risen 285% in the past year as excitement built around SpaceX’s mammoth initial public offering. In its latest quarter, the company made $200 million in sales, a 63% year-over-year increase, and reported a $2.2 billion backlog, up 20% from the previous quarter, suggesting it has room to run and grow.
• But Rocket Lab is also dealing with the Starship-sized elephant in the room: SpaceX. Its shares fell 8% in the past five trading days, likely the result of investors repositioning to load up on its much larger space-industry rival. Its valuation, once viewed as a public market proxy for SpaceX, is now in direct competition with Elon Musk’s $2.4 trillion instant megacap.

Life in the Fast Lane: SpaceX will likely join the Nasdaq-100 in less than a month, skipping the typical one-year wait after Nasdaq introduced a fast-entry rule for companies that rank in the top 40 of the index. SpaceX, of course, is already in the top 10. When that happens, index fund investors will get yet another portfolio adjustment. Like it or not.

Bitcoin’s still sinking in quicksand, and it’s unclear when investors will feel like throwing it a rope. The top token by market cap plummeted below $60,000 this month for the first time since 2024, and this week, it’s worth less than half the record it set last October.

The token briefly rallied along with the broader market on June 15, climbing above $67,000, on hopes that the US-Iran conflict is closing in on a resolution. But it has since pared its gains for myriad reasons, starting with bitcoin’s biggest corporate bull blunting his horns.

No More Smooth Sayling

Michael Saylor spooked investors in early June by announcing that his company, Strategy, had sold off 32 bitcoin for about $2.5 million. The digital pile is tiny compared with Strategy’s total holdings, but the sale was the company’s first time parting with even a grain of sand off the top of its massive bitcoin hoard since late 2022’s crypto winter.

Investors seemed to take Saylor’s announcement as a signal that Strategy, and its underlying asset, could face rough waters ahead. Strategy shares were down about 30% for the month as of the end of last week. STRC, a dividend-paying stock issued by Strategy to raise capital the company uses to buy bitcoin, has been below its intended $100 anchor since mid-May. That’s fueling concerns about Strategy’s ability to keep doling out dividends and the possibility that it’ll need to sell more bitcoin to keep its stockpiling cycle spinning.

Strategy’s struggles may have made investors extra-sensitive to other events that have happened since:

• Bitcoin and other tokens dipped last week after Fed Chair Kevin Warsh’s first FOMC meeting made rate hikes seem more likely later in the year. Cryptocurrencies aren’t investors’ favorite investment vehicle when they’re anticipating higher costs.
• Crypto-exposed stocks, including Coinbase and Robinhood, meanwhile, joined a wider tech rally, rising as bitcoin and other tokens continued to fall. Even Strategy’s stock rose slightly. But instead of pulling crypto tokens up with them, tech stocks and shiny new IPOs like SpaceX’s could be pulling risk-seeking investors away from crypto.

Don’t Look Up: Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong said that he expects bitcoin to bottom out at around $60,000. Crypto exchange Kraken, meanwhile, noted that bitcoin has fallen below its 200-week moving average twice this month, which in the past has signaled an imminent bounce-back. But crypto isn’t exactly known for its predictability, and investors will be watching for major events that could swing its price, like the possible passage of the Clarity Act.

Sam Altman’s company has finally solved its supply problem.

No, we’re not talking about OpenAI and its insatiable appetite for more compute. We’re talking about Oklo, the Altman-backed nuclear fission company, which has struck a multiyear purchasing agreement with Centrus Energy for domestic high-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU), the difficult-to-source fuel for its new-age nuclear reactors.

Nuke Box Fever

Data center fever has nuclear fission companies adopting the same mindset: Solve the science and engineering feat of small modular reactors first, ask questions about uranium fuel supply later. With the technical side now all but cinched up, the supply question has been front and center. The problem? For years, commercial HALEU could only be sourced from China and Russia … not exactly the coziest of trade partners.

Still, the US needed data centers, and data centers needed clean energy, and nuclear energy required HALEU. The National Defense Authorization Act of 2024 directed the US Department of Energy to help the private sector kick-start commercial HALEU enrichment, and in January, Centrus secured a $900 million contract to do just that. Oklo is only one of the beneficiaries:

• Centrus is set to supply enough HALEU fuel to power five of Oklo’s Aurora SMRs in a deal that starts in 2029. The company has also explored using recycled Cold War-era plutonium for its reactors, and CEO Jacob DeWitte once told Barron’s that sourcing fuel was one of its “biggest challenges.”
• In its press release on Thursday, Oklo said that some of the HALEU supply will be used to fuel the Aurora SMRs it is building in Pike County, Ohio, for a nearby Meta data center; the Instagram owner contracted Oklo for energy earlier this year.

HALEU Effect: Shares of Oklo jumped 4% on Thursday, while shares of Centrus Energy jumped more than 12% (note: The market was closed Friday in observance of the Juneteenth holiday). The radioactive glow-up spread across the sector. Uranium supplier Energy Fuels saw its share price jump more than 8%, while Oklo’s SMR rivals NuScale Power and NANO Nuclear Energy jumped 13% and 11%, respectively.