The S&P 500 closed slightly lower Friday, though a climb in tech kept broader losses in check in post-Christmas holiday trading, with activity subdued and volumes expected to remain thin ahead of a truncated New Year’s week.

At 4:00 p.m. ET (21:00 GMT), S&P 500 fell 0.02%, while NASDAQ Composite was down 0.1%, and Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 20 points, or 0.04%.

Tech climbs as Nvidia gains

Tech was one of the bright spots amid subdued day of trading, underpinned by a rise in NVIDIA Corporation after the chipmaker agreed to acquire the assets of AI startup Grok in a $20B deal. The acquisition is expected to help Nvidia to better compete in the AI inference market.  As part of the deal, Groq’s Founder, President, and other members of its core engineering team are expected to join the chipmaker. 

While Nvidia is the "unquestioned leader in AI training and in AI infrastructure hardware generally," Truist believes the deal would help the company compete in the inference market, where the competitors such as Broadcom plan to deliver "TPU-based systems for Anthropic."We believe that NVDA’s further development of Groq’s technology could make NVDA’s capabilities more appealing to high volume inference customers, and even more appealing than a CSP’s solution," it added.

CrowdStrike Holdings Inc also gained after Wedbush said the company "remains one of our favorite tech names and we are seeing deal momentum spread with AI also a clear tailwind for this well positioned tech leader."

The move higher in tech comes amid renewed enthusiasm for technology and AI-related stocks, coupled with market speculation on eventual Federal Reserve interest rate cuts in 2026, underpinned the advance.

With markets poised to resume full trading on Friday after the holiday, investors will monitor economic data and positioning into year-end while navigating historically light volumes and a potential seasonal “Santa Claus rally” that often characterizes late-December trading.