US stocks were mixed on Monday afternoon, with the S&P 500 adding around 0.3% and the Nasdaq up about 0.7% as a flurry of AI deals concentrated gains in megacap tech, while the Dow lost over 180 points. Nvidia rose nearly 3.5% and Microsoft traded mostly flat after Microsoft confirmed export licences to ship Nvidia-class GPUs to the UAE and a separate multiyear GPU cloud contract worth about $9.7bn. Amazon jumped close to 5% on a reported multiyear, about $38bn partnership with OpenAI that will rely heavily on large GPU deployments. Materials and real estate lagged after the ISM manufacturing index missed expectations at 48.7, pointing to softer factory demand. Apple (-0.8%), Meta (-0.9%), and Broadcom (-1.2%) were notable decliners. Elsewhere, Kimberly-Clark plunged more than 13.5% after announcing an approximately $48bn offer for Kenvue while Kenvue surged over 15%. Corporate earnings stayed in focus with Palantir and other AI-linked reporters due this week.