Options activity surged on 7 July, with roughly 44 million contracts changing hands, according to data cited by market-analytics firm TipRanks. The day’s volumes were concentrated in shares tied to artificial-intelligence themes, led by Nvidia, Tesla, MicroStrategy and Apple. New bullish and bearish wagers were sizeable. Traders opened 40,000 Centene January-2027 $25 calls, 37,000 Tesla $95 puts expiring 11 July and 35,000 Alight July-2025 $6 calls, among other positions. Separate flow estimates put Palantir’s net options delta at the equivalent of about 1.09 million shares. The burst of derivatives trading follows a broader rally in AI-linked equities. Nvidia and Microsoft are each edging toward a roughly $4 trillion market capitalization on expectations that demand for chips and cloud-based AI services will accelerate. Alphabet’s DeepMind unit said the coming six months could be the “wildest” yet for the technology, underscoring why investors continue to pile into the sector’s most liquid names.