NEW YORK (AP) — The U.S. stock market is ticking higher in mixed trading on Monday, led once again by technology companies.

The S&P 500 added 0.4% in early trading and was nearing its all-time high set last week, even though the majority of stocks within the index were falling. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 34 points, or 0.1%, as of 9:35 a.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was 0.9% higher.

Nvidia helped drive the market after rising 2.7%. It was one of the strongest forces lifting the S&P 500, much like it has been for the year so far. The chip company has been soaring because of the frenzy around artificial-intelligence technology, as have companies across the AI industry.

Microsoft added 0.8% after it announced a $9.7 billion cloud services contract with AI cloud service provider IREN that will give it access to some of Nvidia’s chips. The five-year deal will help Microsoft as it looks to keep up with AI demand. IREN soared 18.8%.

Palantir Technologies, which came into the day with a stunning 165% gain for the year so far, rose another 2%. Traders are pushing up the AI darling in the final hours before the data platform company reports its latest quarterly results after trading closes for the day.

It and companies across the U.S. stock market will need to hit expectations in order to justify the big gains for their stocks since hitting a low in April. Criticism has been rising that the broad U.S. market, and AI stocks in particular, have become too expensive and could be inflating into a dangerous bubble.

For the most part, companies have been meeting those high expectations. Four out of every five companies in the S&P 500 that have delivered their results for the latest quarter so far have topped analysts’ forecasts, according to FactSet. With the reporting season roughly two-thirds done, companies in the S&P 500 are on track to deliver healthy growth of nearly 11% from a year earlier.

Elsewhere on Wall Street, Kenvue climbed 15.9% after Kimberly-Clark agreed to buy the company behind Tylenol, Band-Aids and Listerine in a deal valuing it at $48.7 billion. Kimberly-Clark, which makes Kleenex and Huggies, will pay for the deal in cash and stock, and its shares fell 12.1%.

On the losing end of Wall Street was Beyond Meat, which fell 11.7%. The plant-based meat company delayed its report for quarterly results to Nov. 11 from Tuesday, saying it needs more time to assess how big of a non-cash charge it will take against its earnings due to issues it had previously disclosed with some of its assets.

Beyond Meat’s stock has been mostly falling since topping $4 in July, but it went on a wild ride last month where it suddenly soared from 52 cents to $3.62 in three days, a nearly 600% surge. It got caught up in the “meme stock” craze, where prices can rise due solely to online hype among traders rather than any change to the company’s actual business.

A more staid performance came from Berkshire Hathaway, the conglomerate run by famed investor Warren Buffett. Its stock edged down by 0.2% after the company reported one of its last sets of quarterly results with Buffett as CEO. The 95-year-old investor will relinquish the title in January.

In stock markets abroad, indexes were mixed in Europe following a stronger finish in Asia.

South Korea’s Kospi jumped 2.8% to another record. SK Hynix soared nearly 11%, helped by recent moves to team up with Nvidia in developing the country’s artificial intelligence infrastructure and capabilities. South Korean shipbuilders also logged gains after China said it would cancel added port fees on U.S.-invested or U.S. flagged vessels after U.S. President Donald Trump met last week with Chinese leader Xi Jinping.

In the bond market, the yield on the 10-year Treasury held at 4.11%, where it was late Friday. It’s been largely climbing since the middle of last week, when Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell warned financial markets not to assume another cut to interest rates is coming in December.

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AP Business Writers Matt Ott and Elaine Kurtenbach contributed.