Stocks were mixed on Monday as market participants rotated back into growth stocks as the artificial intelligence sector announced a series of agreements amongst key players.

The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite (QQQ  ) outperformed its market peers on Monday, climbing 0.5% to end the day at 23,834.72. The broader market S&P 500 Index (SPY  ) also rose about 0.2% to settle at 6,851.97, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DIA  ) lost over 220 points to close at 47,336.68.

In the spotlight, Amazon (AMZN  ) shares rose 4% on Monday after the e-commerce platfrom announced a $38 billion deal with OpenAI, allowing the AI start-up to run workloads on its Amazon Web Service infrastructure. Amazon will also expand computing capacity in the coming years using hundreds of thousands of Nvidia's (NVDA  ) graphics processing units.

Chipmakers also benefited from data center provider Iren (IREN  ) reading a multiyear deal worth $9.7 billion with Microsoft (MSFT  ) to provide the tech company with Nvidia GB300 GPUs. Microsoft also announced it has secured an export license from the Trump administration to ship $15.2 billion worth of Nvidia chips to the United Arab Emirates by the end of 2029.

"Microsoft was also the first company this year under the Trump administration to secure export license from the Commerce Department to ship GPUs to the UAE," the company said in a statement. "These licenses enable us to ship the equivalent of 60,400 additional A100 chips, in this instance involving Nvidia's even more advanced GB300 GPUs."

Elsewhere in market moves, shares of U.S. rare earth companies declined on Monday after the White House said China has agreed to suspend export restrictions on rare earths and will issue general licences for trade -- effectively removing the controls Beijing imposed in April and October 2022. Shares of USA Rare Earth (USAR  ), Energy Fuels (UUUU  ) and NioCorp Developments (NB  ) each fell at least 10% on Monday.

Kenvue (KVUE  ) shares popped on Monday after the Tylenol-owner agreed to be acquired by Kimberly-Clark (KMB  ) in a $48.7 billion cash and stock deal, which is expected to close in the second half of next year. The two companies said they have identified about $1.9 billion in cost synergies, $500 million in incremental profit from revenue synergies -- "the cost synergies are expected to be captured in the first three years following closing, and the revenue synergies are expected to be captured within four years post close."

On the economic front, U.S. factory activity contracted in October as employment rose and prices cooled, the Institute for Supply Management (ISM) reported Monday. The ISM Manufacturing index registered a monthly reading of 48.7%, representing the share of companies reporting growth. Beneath the headline index, the prices index fell 3.9 points to 58%, the production index lost 2.8 points to 48.2%, and the employment index ticked up 0.7 points to 46%.

"A chain reaction of one-month index improvements started with New Orders in August and flowed to Production in September," said Susan Spence, chair of the ISM Manufacturing Business Survey Committee, in a statement. "In October, it manifested in a 1.7-percentage point increase in the Backlog of Orders Index."

Looking ahead, market participants will turn their attention towards earnings reports from companies including Palantir Technologies (PLTR  ), Shopify (SHOP  ), Uber Technologies (UBER  ), Pfizer (PFE  ), Spotify (SPOT  ), and Yum! Brands (YUM  ) on Tuesday.