Level 1 — Absolute Beginner

The Nasdaq-100 is a big list of 100 top technology companies. Every few months, the list changes. New companies join and some companies leave.

On June 22, 2026, five new companies joined the Nasdaq-100. These companies work with AI, or artificial intelligence. AI is technology that lets computers think and learn.

One new company is CoreWeave. It rents powerful computer chips to AI companies. Another new company is Rocket Lab. It sends small rockets and satellites into space.

Some companies left the Nasdaq-100 on the same day. The index is now more focused on AI technology than ever before. This is a big change for the technology world.

index

a list of companies used to show how the stock market is doing

artificial intelligence

computer technology that can think, learn, and make decisions

quarterly

happening four times a year, every three months

rebalancing

the process of changing which companies are in a list or fund

satellite

a machine sent into space that orbits the Earth

chip

a very small electronic part used inside computers and phones

infrastructure

the basic systems and equipment needed for technology or a country to work

shares

small parts of a company that people can buy and sell

Level 2 — Elementary

The Nasdaq-100 is a stock market index that tracks 100 of the largest technology companies in the United States. Four times a year, the index is updated in a process called rebalancing. Companies that no longer qualify can be removed, and newer companies that meet the requirements can be added.

On June 22, 2026, the Nasdaq-100 welcomed five new members: CoreWeave, Astera Labs, Nebius Group, Rocket Lab, and Teradyne. Each of these companies is connected to the growing field of artificial intelligence. Five other companies, including Charter Communications and Zscaler, were removed from the index.

CoreWeave rents high-powered computer chips to companies that need them for AI work. Astera Labs makes special chips that help connect computers in AI data centers. Nebius Group runs cloud computing services focused on AI. Together, they show how deeply AI has changed the technology industry.

The S&P 500, another important stock market index, also made changes on June 22. It added Marvell Technology, which makes chips used in data centers and AI systems. These changes across two major indexes on the same day show how important AI companies have become in the modern economy.

stock market

a place where people buy and sell shares of companies

data center

a large building that houses many computers and servers

connectivity

the ability of computers and devices to connect to each other

qualify

to meet the requirements for something

revenue

the total income earned by a company

benchmark

a standard or measurement used to compare things

exposure

the degree to which an investment is affected by something

valuation

the estimated total value of a company

Level 3 — Intermediate

In one of the most AI-focused index changes in its history, the Nasdaq-100 removed five companies and welcomed five new ones on June 22, 2026, in its quarterly rebalancing. The incoming group, which includes CoreWeave, Astera Labs, Nebius Group, Rocket Lab, and Teradyne, collectively represents the growing ecosystem of companies that supply the hardware, connectivity, and cloud computing power that underpin the modern AI boom.

The rebalancing reflects a broader structural shift in the technology industry. CoreWeave, which rents graphical processing units known as GPUs to AI developers and hyperscale cloud providers, has seen its business grow rapidly since the emergence of large language models. Astera Labs, whose semiconductor devices manage the speed and reliability of data transfers between AI processors, has become a critical supplier to the world's largest data center builders. Nebius Group, a spin-off from Russia's Yandex, now focuses on providing AI cloud infrastructure to customers globally.

The departing companies, including telecoms provider Charter Communications and enterprise software firm Cognizant, represent an older era of the technology sector that is less directly tied to the AI revolution. Cybersecurity firm Zscaler was also removed, despite its continued relevance to the industry. The overall effect of the swap is an index with a substantially greater focus on the companies building the core systems of the AI economy.

The changes took effect before the market opened on June 22, the first quarterly rebalancing conducted under a new Nasdaq membership process introduced in May 2026. The S&P 500 also completed its own rebalancing on the same day, adding Marvell Technology, a designer of custom semiconductors for data centers. Market analysts noted that both indexes now carry more exposure to AI infrastructure than at any previous point in their histories.

ecosystem

a network of businesses and technologies that interact and depend on each other

semiconductor

a material used to make electronic chips and devices

hyperscale

referring to very large computing infrastructure built and operated by major tech companies

GPU

graphical processing unit; a chip originally for graphics, now widely used for AI computing

weighting

the relative importance given to a component within an index or portfolio

spin-off

a new company created from a division or part of an existing company

legacy

referring to older systems or companies that are being gradually replaced by newer ones

deployment

the act of bringing something into effective use or position

Level 4 — Advanced

In the most AI-weighted reshuffling of membership in its history, the Nasdaq-100 Index on June 22, 2026 added five companies whose revenues, order books, and market trajectories are anchored almost entirely in the artificial intelligence supply chain: CoreWeave, Astera Labs, Nebius Group, Rocket Lab, and Teradyne. Five incumbents, including telecoms conglomerate Charter Communications and legacy IT-services provider Cognizant, were simultaneously ejected, a juxtaposition that compressed into a single trading-day announcement the broad structural reordering that has spent three years quietly reweighting the technology sector.

The additions are not coincidental. CoreWeave's business model, renting NVIDIA H100 and H200 GPU clusters to AI developers and hyperscalers on a metered basis, has made it a canonical proxy for raw AI-compute demand. Astera Labs, whose PCIe and CXL retimer chips regulate signal integrity across the high data rates demanded by transformer-model training runs, occupies a similarly critical position in the AI-accelerator interconnect stack. Nebius Group, the Yandex spin-off that reorganised its global operations around GPU-dense cloud infrastructure after divesting its Russian assets, rounds out a trio that together spans the infrastructure-as-a-service, chip, and connectivity layers of the AI economy.

Rocket Lab and Teradyne are more tangential but no less revealing inclusions. Rocket Lab's Electron and upcoming Neutron vehicles have attracted interest as orbital deployment vectors for space-based AI sensing and edge-compute constellations. Teradyne, a semiconductor-test-equipment manufacturer with an expanding robotics automation division, reflects the convergence between AI inference at scale and the industrial systems being redesigned to run on it. Their inclusion signals that the Nasdaq-100 committee is reading AI infrastructure expansively, extending it well beyond pure-play large language model providers.

The concurrent S&P 500 rebalancing, which added Marvell Technology alongside contract manufacturer Flex, deepened the point. Marvell's custom application-specific integrated circuit business, building bespoke AI accelerators for the largest hyperscalers under multi-year design-win agreements, places it squarely at the epicentre of the sovereign-model trend in which Amazon, Google, and Microsoft are designing their own silicon rather than purchasing commodity GPUs. The fact that both marquee US equity benchmarks amplified their AI exposure on the same day marks June 22, 2026 as a notable inflection point in the institutionalisation of the AI economy.

proxy

something used as a representative or measure of something else that is difficult to measure directly

retimer

a chip that regenerates and resynchronises digital signals over high-speed data connections

divestiture

the process of selling off a part of a business or set of assets

chokepoint