US stock markets closed at record highs on Monday as chipmakers provided the market’s upward thrust and Monday.com surged 26% following a strong earnings beat that validated the company’s pivot toward an artificial intelligence-centred work management platform. The S&P 500 gained 0.19% to close at 7,412.84, its highest ever closing level, while the Nasdaq added 0.10% to finish at 26,274.13, also a record, despite early headwinds from rising oil prices triggered by President Trump’s rejection of Iran’s latest peace counterproposal over the weekend.
Monday.com [NASDAQ: MNDY] reported first-quarter revenue of $351.3 million, representing 24% year-over-year growth and exceeding the FactSet consensus estimate of $339.1 million by a meaningful margin. The company attributed the outperformance directly to the launch of its new AI Work Platform, which rearchitects the entire product around AI-agent execution rather than passive assistance. The platform now includes Monday DB 3.0, which expands board data capacity from roughly 100,000 to over 10 million items, a technical leap designed to enable the kind of AI-scale operations that large enterprise clients require.
The beat landed against a complicated backdrop. Monday.com had seen its stock fall sharply in February after issuing weaker-than-expected full-year guidance and abandoning a 2027 revenue target of $1.8 billion, a move that triggered shareholder lawsuits accusing the company of misleading investors about its long-term growth trajectory. Monday’s earnings result effectively begins the rehabilitation of that narrative, offering concrete evidence that the AI platform repositioning is generating real customer demand rather than headline momentum alone.
Management raised full-year 2026 revenue guidance from between $1.452 billion and $1.462 billion to between $1.466 billion and $1.474 billion, slightly ahead of the analyst consensus of $1.458 billion. Enterprise customer concentration continued to improve, with 42% of annual recurring revenue now coming from customers generating over $50,000 in ARR and a record number of new clients exceeding $500,000 in ARR for the first time. Internally, the company reported a 32% increase in developer output and a 38% reduction in product time-to-market, both attributed to AI-driven productivity improvements.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average [INDEXDJX: .DJI] advanced 95.31 points, or 0.19%, to close at 49,704.47, with energy stocks broadly higher as Brent crude pushed back above $104 per barrel following Trump’s Truth Social post calling Iran’s counteroffer “TOTALLY UNACCEPTABLE.” Valero Energy, Occidental Petroleum, Devon Energy, and ConocoPhillips each gained between 1.5% and 2% as traders recalibrated the probability of a near-term Hormuz reopening.
The week ahead carries significant macro weight. April consumer price index data drops on Tuesday and will be scrutinised for evidence that the Iran war’s energy shock is embedding itself in broader inflation beyond gasoline. The Senate is also expected to vote this week on the confirmation of Kevin Warsh as Federal Reserve chair, with Jerome Powell’s term expiring on May 15. How Warsh addresses monetary policy under sustained geopolitical inflation pressure will be the defining question of his opening months at the institution.
Cisco [NASDAQ: CSCO] reports earnings on Wednesday, and the market will focus on whether AI networking demand is translating into margin improvement after the company posted margin pressure in its prior quarterly release. Applied Materials [NASDAQ: AMAT] reports Thursday and enters the release at an all-time high, having rallied 68% over the past year on AI chip infrastructure demand.
