After a soft start to 2016, the Nasdaq Composite rallied strongly from mid-February through the year's end, finishing with a slightly above-average 9.8% gain. However, 2016 was anything but average for two large-cap tech companies whose shares dramatically outperformed the market averages on the year. Moving large-cap stocks like these requires an impressive catalyst. So let's examine what triggered the rallies in NVIDIA and Computer Sciences shares in 2016 and consider how investors should think about their shares in 2017 and beyond. Investors continued to awaken to NVIDIA's enviable long-term growth potential in 2016, continuing the extended rally in its shares.

Ford is investing $1 billion in a secretive artificial intelligence startup headed by former Google and Uber execs to advance its self-driving car efforts. The startup, Argo AI, was founded by Bryan Salesky, the former director of hardware for Google's self-driving-car efforts, and Peter Rander, Uber's engineering lead at its autonomous cars center. Argo AI is based in Pittsburgh, Penn. The $1 billion investment will be spread out over five years as Ford looks to commercialize its self-driving technology by 2021. According to Ford Chief Technical Officer Raj Nair, $1 billion is what it costs to develop advanced autonomous technology, and the investment is consistent with what Ford said its capital allocation in the space would be when it presented information to investors last year.

Sophos has announced a deal to acquire the core technologies of anti-malware protection outfit Invincea for $100m plus up to $20m, dependent on first-year revenues. Invincea makes a line of signature-less endpoint procession technologies that rely on machine learning and behavioural monitoring to block malware. Sophos plans to integrate Invincea's tech into the Sophos Central endpoint product line, before releasing revamped products later his year. The plan parallels the integration of SurfRight's technology into Sophos's product line following a smaller December 2015 acquisition. In the 12 months to 31 March 2016, Invincea recorded billings of $13.4m, revenue of $9.8m and a loss before tax of $11.8m.

Nvidia continued to see demand for its graphics processors in the emerging world of artificial intelligence in its fourth quarter earnings reported Thursday. In its fourth quarter earnings release, the Santa Clara, Calif.-based company reported revenue of $2.17 billion, up 55% year over year, on earnings per share of $1.13, up 117% a year ago. Wall Street analysts estimated $2.11 billion in revenue on EPS of 83 cents. Traditionally, the company's processors have been mostly used to power the latest gaming graphics, but the chips have become popular to run AI software in the data center and autonomous vehicles. A specific branch of AI, called deep learning, is where Nvidia's processors particularly shine.

Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang introducing the Nvidia Spot, a USD 49.95 microphone and speaker that will let owners use Google Assistant anywhere in a home, at the company's CES 2017 keynote (Photo by Ethan Miller/Getty Images) Nvidia continued to see demand for its graphics processors in the emerging world of artificial intelligence in its fourth quarter earnings reported Thursday. In its fourth quarter earnings release, the Santa Clara, Calif.-based company reported revenue of $2.17 billion, up 55% year over year, on earnings per share of $1.13, up 117% a year ago. Wall Street analysts estimated $2.11 billion in revenue on EPS of 83 cents. Traditionally, the company's processors have been mostly used to power the latest gaming graphics, but the chips have become popular to run AI software in the data center and autonomous vehicles. A specific branch of AI, called deep learning, is where Nvidia's processors particularly shine.

Nvidia posted its fourth quarter results on Thursday, once again surpassing market expectations. However, its outlook for the current quarter is only slightly above market market consensus. Shares fell in after-hours trading. Non-GAAP earnings for the quarter were $1.13, up 117 percent from a year earlier. Revenue came to $2.17 billion, up 55 percent year-over-year.

Law enforcement agencies across the country are adopting body-worn cameras as a means both of increasing their transparency with the public and generating actionable feedback to improve officer performance. Problem is, all these body cams produce terabytes of data daily, far more than many departments can effectively handle. That's why Taser (yes those guys, they make body cameras too) announced on Thursday that it has acquired a pair of companies that specialize in computer- and machine-vision to create the "Axon AI" group. Together, they'll develop a platform that can efficiently parse this flood of data in real time. The Axon AI group will include about 20 programmers and engineers.

Sophos (LSE: SOPH), a global leader in network and endpoint security, today announced it has entered into an agreement to acquire Invincea, a visionary provider of next-generation malware protection. Invincea's endpoint security portfolio is designed to detect and prevent unknown malware and sophisticated attacks via its patented deep learning neural-network algorithms. It has been consistently ranked as among the best performing machine learning, signature-less next-generation endpoint technologies in third-party testing and rated highly both for high detection and low false-positive rates. Headquartered in Fairfax, Va., Invincea was founded by chief executive officer Anup Ghosh to address the rapidly growing zero-day security threat from nation states, cyber criminals and rogue actors. Invincea's flagship product X by Invincea uses deep learning neural networks and behavioral monitoring to detect previously unseen malware and stops attacks before damage occurs.

Chorus.ai, a startup that uses AI (artificial intelligence) to analyze sales calls, announced today that it has raised $16 million. The round was led by Redpoint Ventures. The San Francisco- and Tel Aviv-based startup provides a software-as-a-service (SaaS) offering that uses in-house developed speech recognition, natural language processing (NLP), and AI to transcribe, analyze, and deliver real-time feedback on sales conversations. The aim is to improve sales rep performance and help companies understand why some deals don't close. "Studies show that win rates increase by 33 percent with a proper coaching program in place, yet most managers don't have the time to sit in on calls, and no one has the capacity to learn from the thousands of meetings that take place each quarter," said Roy Raanani, CEO and cofounder of Chorus.ai, in a statement.

Tim Cook had indicated a lot of developments from Apple in his quarterly earnings call last week. He indicated that the company's flagship smartphone, the iPhone still had much more technological evolution to go for. Here is the range of products that the Apple CEO talked about and based on how they are expected to develop in 2017. "I think the smartphone is still in the early innings of the game," Cook said about the iPhone. Could this be an indication of some new technological changes coming to the device so as to keep it in "the game?" Apple generally launches just one phone per year compared to its competitors such as Samsung and LG, which have devices at various price ranges and have round the year launches.