Gains in the tech sector during Q1 have been uneven, with powerhouses like Nvidia (NVDA) seeing its stock surge 80% on AI hype and with Tesla recording a nearly 30% drop on weakening EV demand. Yahoo Finance Tech Editor Dan Howley joins the Live show to break down the good, bad, and ugly in the tech space.

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Editor's note: This article was written by Nicholas Jacobino

Video Transcript

MADISON MILLS: Obviously, been quite a ride for tech, so far, this year from the high highs with the AI hype driving NVIDIA shares up over 80% to low lows like weakening EV demand, driving Tesla down almost 30%, and down in the premarket trade today, as well, 5%, at the moment here.

We're going to go into the good, bad, and ugly of the tech sector in Q1 with our very own Dan Howley. Dan, a lot of movement in your beat always.

DAN HOWLEY: Yeah. It's a good time to write about tech always. And let's just go over some of the good stuff before we get into the bad, and then the ugly. The good-- kick things off, NVIDIA, obviously, had another whopper of a quarter. They had an announcement from their GTC event, where they launched their Blackwell GPU architecture.

They saw year-to-date shares up 89%. Over the last 12 months, up 226%. We also had Intel. They got some of the money from the CHIPS Act, finally, $8.5 billion plus some loans in there, that they're able to take advantage of.

We also saw Apple, in a good way, kill its electric car project. That was a decade in the making. Seemed to not really be going anywhere. This will allow them to focus more on AI, which is something that, according to Wall Street or according to, I guess, the perception they're severely lacking.

And then, finally, we had Meta. They announced that they're going to be providing a quarterly dividend of $0.50 per share and authorized additional share buybacks of $50 billion. That sent the stock skyrocketing 38% year-to-date, 131% over the last 12 months.

Now, let's get to the fun stuff. This is the bad and the ugly. The bad-- let's kick things off with the FTC. They announced an inquiry into Alphabet, Amazon, and Microsoft over investments in AI with Anthropic and OpenAI. Obviously, the FTC trying to make sure that no one firm dominates the still nascent generative AI space.

The Digital Markets Act over in the EU, that has the European Commission looking into whether Apple, Google, and Meta are actually complying with that law that basically ensures that big tech players don't dominate their markets.

We also had Google with a terrible debut of their Gemini generative image software. The big image that went out there was a--

JARED BLIKRE: Missed the mark.

DAN HOWLEY: Yeah. Missed the mark is what they said. Multicultural Nazis are not a good thing that you want to post on the internet. And that's what ended up happening with Gemini. And then, obviously, we have the TikTok ban that Congress is trying to get through.

And then, finally, let's go over some of the very ugly stuff. The first is-- this is heinous. We have the DOJ's Antitrust fight against Apple, basically, saying that they try to block out competition, which harms consumers.

We have Elon Musk's lawsuit against OpenAI saying that they've abandoned their original mission for creating AI that benefits humanity in favor of profits. We have Intel, their earnings fell well short with really just blasted them as far as their share price goes.

Generally, we've seen a lot of tech layoffs continue. And then this EV demand slowdown that we're seeing, where people just aren't taking up EVs as fast as anybody really thought that they would or wanted to. And so that's really hurting things. And we see that with Tesla coming in with their announcement.

So look, it's been a wild quarter. I think that the main story, the main takeaway is still NVIDIA. They're the big leaders. But look, Apple getting play all over the place as they usually do in both the good and bad side.

JARED BLIKRE: Yeah. And I've heard their own offerings competitors to OpenAI really gaining traction in the marketplace and also in some of these benchmark tests.