J.P. Morgan has raised its S&P 500 target for the second time in two months, stating that AI investments are beginning to yield returns.

JPMorgan strategists have raised their S&P 500 index target for the second time in two months, citing strong corporate earnings and significant artificial intelligence investments beginning to pay off. Led by Dubravko Lakos-Bujas, the team now projects that this U.S. stock market benchmark will rise to 8,000 points, approximately 3% above last Friday's closing level. They had previously increased their target from 7,600 points to 7,800 points in June. The latest forecast is slightly above the average prediction of 20 strategists. The JPMorgan team indicated that the second-quarter earnings season has already shown signs that the capital expenditures of so-called AI super-scale cloud service providers are being monetized through customer demand. They noted that the growth of cloud businesses at Google, Amazon, and Microsoft is accelerating, and backlogs are increasing, which should help alleviate market concerns regarding these companies' returns on invested capital.