Nasdaq-100 Onboards 5 New Stocks in AI-Fueled Rebalancing

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.

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