May 09, 2026: Best Six Weeks For NASDAQ In 17 Years

Last week, Dow Jones Industrial gained 0.2%, S&P 500 rose 2.2%, Nasdaq composite was up 4.5%. S&P 500 and Nasdaq have now risen for six consecutive weeks, and Nasdaq’s ~25% six week gain is the best six week gain since April 2009. Lime and geothermal startup Fervo Energy both filed for IPOs, with Fervo targeting a US$6.5 billion valuation. GameStop launched a US$56 billion bid for eBay. Cisco moved to acquire agent-security startup Astrix. Samsung joined the US$1 trillion market club, fueled by a record operating profit surge and potential foundry talks with Apple. Anthropic pledged a US$200 billion spend with Google Cloud over five years, and secured 100% of the compute from xAI’s Colossus data center. CoreWeave highlighted AI demand with a US$100 billion revenue backlog. However, its stock was down 9% on rising Capex. OpenAI is reportedly moving towards hardware, fast-tracking an AI-native smartphone for H1 2027 to rival Apple. The AI trade continues to diverge software stocks. TCI slashed its Microsoft stake by 90%, citing concerns over AI’s potential to disrupt the Office ecosystem. Datadog and AMD were up 30% and 16% respectively, as investors rewarded accelerating AI-driven sales and a doubling of the data center CPU TAM. In Canada, Shopify fell 9% on a projected Q2 revenue slowdown, as rising AI infrastructure costs began to offset software efficiency gains. In news pertaining to Sophic clients, Hybrid Power Solutions secured an inaugural $80,000 order from the NYC MTA and a follow-on from Canada’s largest transit commission, supporting a $12.5 million industrial pipeline. Kraken Robotics signed an MOU with SEFINE SISAM to integrate its KATFISH technology into Turkish maritime security operations. 01 Quantum received a USPTO Notice of Allowance for its Quantum AI Wrapper (QAW), solidifying its defensible position in encrypted AI computation.

Shopify (SHOP-NASDAQ, SHOP-TSX) shares slide on predicted revenue slowdown.

Shopify projected a slowdown in revenue growth in the second quarter and said that AI costs had offset efficiency gains in its software business. Shares in the commerce software company fell 9% following the results on Tuesday. Shopify’s overall first-quarter revenue grew 34% year over year to US$3.2 billion, benefitting in part from growing international adoption of its payments services as well as foreign exchange. It also cited a boost from a change in revenue-sharing agreements with developers, which will fade in subsequent quarters. Shopify said it would grow revenue by a percentage in the high twenties in the second quarter, lower than 31% growth the same period in 2025. Shopify has been touting increased usage of its free Sidekick tool, which helps merchants maintain their Shopify sites with AI. The company said that LLM costs driven by growing merchant AI adoption had partially offset efficiency-driven margin gains, with software gross margins holding at 80%, in line with the year-ago period. Shopify said costs associated with the software business rose 20% to US$148 million, driven primarily by a US$22 million increase in cloud and infrastructure costs, while the company’s research and development expenses rose due in part to a US$25 million increase in hardware and software costs including AI usage. Chief Financial Officer Jeff Hoffmeister addressed an analyst question about Shopify seeking money transmitter licenses, which The Information first reported on April 30. He said the move would give Shopify flexibility to accelerate offering financial services such as lending and merchant accounts, adding that such services represent a key growth opportunity for the company. https://tinyurl.com/yc663h4a

Sophic Client Hybrid Power Solutions (HPSS-CSE, HPSIF-OTC) receives first purchase order from MTA New York City Transit.

Inaugural sale for Batt Pack Spark portable power system with MTA New York for Approximately $80,000. Hybrid Power Solutions received a purchase order from Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) New York City Transit for one Batt Pack Spark (30kWh) portable power system together with four Folding Solar Panels (500W). The total value of the contract is expected to be approximately $80,000, with delivery scheduled for the Company’s Q1 2027 (fiscal quarter ending August 2026, due to the Company’s May fiscal year-end). Combined with the recent follow-on from Canada’s largest Transit Commission, this vertical is witnessing increasing demand as our C$3.0 million in quoted opportunities convert into orders. Recall, management currently monitors $12.5 million in high potential, quoted opportunities across four primary industrial verticals. Based on current sales velocity and lead engagement, over 70% of this pipeline is projected to materialize into firm contracts within the next 12 months. This order reflects MTA’s commitment to adopting cleaner, more efficient technologies that reduce emissions, lower operating costs, and improve reliability across its extensive and complex network. As one of the most influential transit agencies in North America, the MTA often sets the tone for broader adoption of innovative solutions, and this deployment further validates the Company’s relevance in the highly complex and evolving public transit sector.“We are proud to support one of the largest transit authorities in North America with our Batt Pack Spark system,” said Francois Byrne, CEO of Hybrid Power Solutions. “This order is a strong endorsement of how our technology performs in real-world conditions and highlights the growing need for reliable, fuel-free power solutions across the public sector.” The deployment of the Batt Pack Spark paired with solar integration is expected to provide MTA with a scalable, quiet, and low-maintenance power solution for field operations and equipment support. https://tinyurl.com/488bdy5m

Sophic Client Hybrid Power Solutions (HPSS-CSE, HPSIF-OTC) secures follow-on order from Canada’s largest transit commission.

Hybrid Power Solutions has secured a follow-on order from Canada’s Largest Transit Commission. The order includes the Company’s standard 30 kWh Spark portable power system along with a towable trailer for mobile deployment. “Continued orders from a major Canadian transit commission highlight the reliability of our solutions and the adaptability of our platform,” said Francois Byrne, CEO of Hybrid Power Solutions. “Working closely with leading public sector customers allows us to better understand evolving operational requirements, refine product fit, and address high-value use cases, while we a build a book of sustainable repeat business with several marquee customers. This latest order reinforces the flexibility of our Spark platform in addressing the dynamic power requirements of transit systems, while highlighting a practical path for municipalities to adopt cleaner energy solutions without sacrificing reliability. We see this as a foundation for ongoing collaboration, with opportunities to expand deployments and support future electrification initiatives.” The 30 kWh Spark with trailer will be deployed to support the transit operator’s sustainability goals, providing reliable, fuel-free power for generic tools, repairs, maintenance, and construction activities across the transit rail system. The unit will be particularly valuable for weekend construction work conducted in between roadways for the streetcars in locations where grid power is unavailable, enabling safe and efficient operations while eliminating reliance on traditional diesel generators. This announcement follows a $203,000 order from the same customer on March 24, 2026 for a custom designed Spark Cube. https://tinyurl.com/y3bt9pnt

Sophic Client Kraken Robotics (PNG-TSXV, KRKNF-OTC) signs Memorandum of Understanding with SEFINE SISAM.

Kraken Robotics signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with SEFINE SISAM (Strategic Unmanned Systems Research Center) during the SAHA exposition in Türkiye. As part of the agreement, Kraken will work with SISAM to integrate KATFISH into its mission planning software and develop automatic target recognition (ATR) capabilities for Kraken Synthetic Aperture Sonar. “We’re pleased to continue our work with SEFINE following a successful at-sea demonstration earlier this year,” said Bernard Mills, Executive Vice President of Defence at Kraken Robotics. “This partnership poises us to rapidly develop and deliver relevant capability in a region that combines industrial excellence and operational need. Together, we are advancing fully integrated, autonomous solutions for seabed warfare and mine countermeasures—enhancing the speed, accuracy, and efficiency of maritime security operations.” Kraken and SEFINE recently demonstrated Kraken’s KATFISH and unmanned surface vessel (USV) launch and recovery system from SEFINE’s RD-22 USV off the coast of İstanbul, Türkiye, validating rapid, high-resolution detection and classification of mine-like objects and critical underwater infrastructure in an operational environment. https://tinyurl.com/3wapt4u9

Sophic Client 01 Quantum Inc (ONE-TSXV, OONEF-OTCQB) receives Notice of Allowance from the USPTO for patent covering its QAW technology.

01 Quantum received a Notice of Allowance for its secure Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology. United States patent application No. 19/341,748 has been examined by the USPTO and is allowed for issuance as a Patent. The invention, a secure AI professional/managed service for enterprises, and government such as national defense, as well as a secure AI model marketplace system, secures both models and user data by managing computation-preserving-cryptography (CPC) encryption of data and models with public and private CPC user key pairs. This Notice of Allowance marks an important milestone for the Company from both an R&D and commercial perspective. It reinforces the innovative nature of 01’s secure AI professional/managed services and its model marketplace platform, as well as strengthen the Company’s ability to showcase this differentiation in business development discussions with prospective enterprise and government defence customers. As governments and enterprises accelerate adoption of AI systems, concerns around data exposure, model theft, and quantum-era vulnerabilities are becoming more relevant purchasing criteria. These efforts are increasingly important as stakeholders seek to protect their proprietary AI models and data, in an accelerating AI race. 01 Quantum’s architecture for encrypted AI computation gives the Company a defensible, differentiated position. For customers, partners, and channel integrators, this provides independent third-party validation that 01 Quantum’s secure-AI approach is both novel and technically credible further strengthening the Company’s go-to-market messaging and competitive posture, supporting the Company’s organic revenue growth efforts. Andrew Cheung, CEO of 01 Quantum, stated, “Our Quantum AI Wrapper technology (QAW), embodies our patent application. It is designed to let AI systems work on data without ever exposing that data in readable form. It does this by combining Fully Homomorphic Encryption (FHE), which allows computation on encrypted information, with our standards-based IronCAP™ PQC. The result is an AI environment where prompts, model parameters, and outputs stay encrypted end-to-end, even if the underlying system is compromised.” The Company demonstrated an application embodying its QAW technology at its recent Shareholders’ Meeting. The demonstration is available on its web site under Investor Relations / Recent Events at: Investor Relations AI Demonstration. https://tinyurl.com/4kyt3a5p

Moment Energy raises US$40 million Series B to give used EV batteries new life.

Moment Energy announced that the Vancouver-based company has successfully raised a more than US$40 million Series B round led by fellow Vancouverites Evok Innovations. Founded in 2020, Moment Energy is a cleantech company that repurposes electric vehicle (EV) batteries into commercial-scale battery energy storage systems (BESS). Its proprietary technology claims to have extended system lifespans from 15 years to 30 years, and keep used EV batteries out of the landfill. https://tinyurl.com/fwv8txja

Lime, the Uber-backed micromobility company, files for IPO.

After years of hints and preparation, the Uber-backed electric bike and scooter rental startup Lime has filed for an initial public offering. The company, which is incorporated as Neutron Holdings, Inc., has eyed the public markets for at least five years. CEO Wayne Ting last spoke to TechCrunch in 2023 about the prospect of an IPO, noting at the time that Lime had the economics, the growth, and the profitability to take the startup public. All that was required was proper market conditions. The company intends to list on Nasdaq under the ticker symbol “LIME.” Lime did not share terms of the offering, which was filed Friday with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Lime’s IPO filing shows a company with growing revenue, but not yet profitability. The company generated US$521 million in revenue in 2023, US$686.6 million in 2024, and US$886.7 million last year. Its net losses were $122.3 million in 2023, but that line item has narrowed the past two years. Lime reported net losses of US$33.9 million in 2024 and US$59.3 million in 2025. Lime also reported it had free cash flow the past three years; its free cash flow was US$104 million in 2025, nearly double from the previous year due to an increase in cash provided by operating activities. And yet, the company has a significant amount of debt. Lime reported around US$1 billion in current liabilities in the filing. Roughly US$846 million of that is due 12 months from now. https://tinyurl.com/2cs2fcr6

Geothermal startup Fervo Energy to raise up to US$1.3 Billion in IPO.

Geothermal startup Fervo Energy said Monday it hopes to raise up to US$1.3 billion in its initial public offering. The company would be valued at up to US$6.5 billion if shares sell at the top of its US$21 to US$24 price target. That’s more than twice what Fervo had reportedly been seeking earlier this year when it confidentially filed paperwork with the SEC to start the IPO process. The stock will trade on Nasdaq under the ticker FRVO. Fervo’s price target comes on the heels of X-energy’s successful IPO. The nuclear power startup raised US$1 billion in an upsized IPO. When the company set its price target for the IPO, it sought a valuation of around US$7 billion. Today, X-energy’s market capitalization i over US$8 billion. Both Fervo and X-energy have been boosted by surging electricity demand from tech companies, which have been racing to secure supplies to feed their AI data centers. The scramble has driven prices for new natural gas power plants up 66% in the last two years. Fervo says it’s Cape Station power plant — its first large-scale project — will generate electricity at US$7,000 per kilowatt of installed capacity. The company’s goal is to reduce that to US$3,000 per kilowatt of capacity, at which point it will start being cost competitive with natural gas. https://tinyurl.com/2wba5vda

Anthropic near to finalizing US$1.5 billion Private Equity Joint Venture.

Anthropic is close to sealing the creation of a joint venture with private equity firms to sell its AI to the PE firms’ customers, the Wall Street Journal reported late last Sunday. Anthropic, Blackstone and Hellman & Friedman are each expected to invest about US$300 million, while Goldman Sachs will put in US$150 million, the newspaper said. General Atlantic and other firms are also expected to participate. The funds, totalling US$1.5 billion, will set up a new venture to use technical consultants to help companies integrate AI, the report said. Tech companies including OpenAI and Salesforce are also using such consultants to help customers use AI, in an effort to accelerate adoption of their agents and other services. https://tinyurl.com/ynbt3xez

OpenAI sets up US$10 billion Private-Equity Joint Venture.

OpenAI has raised US$4 billion from 19 private equity firms and consultancies including TPG, Brookfield Asset Management, Bain Capital and Advent for a new company that will employ specialized tech consultants to help the PE firms’ portfolio companies integrate AI, according to a person with direct knowledge of the discussions. The new company, called The Deployment Company, will use the new money to hire hundreds of these consultants, sometimes called forward-deployed engineers, and is looking to buy small consultancies to increase its staff. OpenAI is investing US$500 million in its stock, based on its most recent valuation of US$730 billion, for acquisitions and could add US$150 million additionally for employee stock comp, according to the person. OpenAI and its partners have valued the new company at US$10 billion, before the investment. The plans are part of a broader push by AI companies to increase spending from corporations on AI. Anthropic on Monday announced it had set up its own joint venture, with PE firms including Blackstone, Heller & Friedman and Goldman Sachs. https://tinyurl.com/3a5jw4t4

Anthropic commits to spending US$200 billion on Google’s cloud and chips.

When Google last month said it would supply Anthropic with an astonishing five gigawatts of server capacity, the companies didn’t put a dollar figure on that commitment. But as part of the deal, which begins next year, Anthropic plans to spend about US$200 billion with Google over five years, according to a person with knowledge of it. The commitment means Anthropic represents more than 40% of the “revenue backlog” Google disclosed to investors last week, reflecting contractual commitments from its cloud customers. While that sounds like a high percentage, revenue backlogs reported by Google’s cloud rivals are even more tied to Anthropic and its archrival OpenAI. Together, contracts involving Anthropic and OpenAI now make up around half of the UD$2 trillion revenue backlog across Amazon, Microsoft, Google and Oracle, the four biggest U.S. cloud providers. It’s a reflection of just how much the AI boom still hinges on the plans of two cash-burning startups. The cloud providers have anticipated such deals for years. Google, Microsoft and Amazon have each invested billions of dollars in the two AI leaders in the hopes they will become large renters of cloud servers, and ultimately deliver the cloud providers revenue that is many times the size of their investments. https://tinyurl.com/2rmrmujs

Anthropic says it’s buying 100% of compute from xAI’s Colossus data center.

Anthropic has struck a deal to use all of the compute capacity from xAI’s first data center in Memphis within the coming month, the company said on Wednesday. The data center, known as Colossus 1, has 300 megawatts of capacity and more than 220,000 Nvidia chips. xAI also said the companies had struck a deal involving Colossus 1, but did not confirm how much capacity Anthropic is buying. Neither company disclosed financial details of the deal, though both also said Anthropic had “expressed interest” in partnering with SpaceX on data centers in space in the future. In a post on X, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said he’d agreed to the deal after spending time with the Anthropic team last week and that xAI would continue to train its models at its second data center in Memphis. The news comes after xAI also disclosed a deal to sell compute from its data centers to Cursor. SpaceX has two data centers in Memphis and has purchased a site for a third data center nearby. xAI has had performance issues, including outages that have interrupted training of its AI models at its second data center known as Macrohard. The company has also faced intense pushback from neighbors concerned about xAI’s use of natural gas turbines to power its facilities. https://tinyurl.com/mr3jjun9

Anthropic signs US$1.8 billion cloud deal with Akamai.

Anthropic is the unnamed customer behind a US$1.8 billion cloud deal that Akamai announced on Thursday, according to a person with direct knowledge of the matter. That deal sent the content delivery network provider’s stock soaring 27% on Friday. The seven-year cloud contract—which Akamai disclosed Thursday without naming the customer—is the largest in the company’s history. Executives described the customer only as a “leading frontier model company.” The agreement marks an early validation of Akamai’s push into the booming market for renting Nvidia GPUs to AI developers. The Cambridge, Mass.-based company is betting that its sprawling network of smaller data centers located near major population hubs can help it carve out a role in AI inference. Developers increasingly want AI computing power located closer to end users to reduce latency. It’s not clear what kind of GPUs Anthropic will rent from Akamai. Akamai announced a US$200 million cloud deal in February, which involved renting out chips called RTX Pros that are a part of Nvidia’s Blackwell family of GPUs. Those chips have less horsepower than the Blackwell GPUs most AI developers use, but could be better suited for smaller data centers. “We are seeing a very strong pipeline with some very large opportunities—some customers that want to start with a couple hundred GPUs, some that want to start with a thousand or more,” Akamai CEO Tom Leighton said on the company’s earnings call. https://tinyurl.com/4y9hyv82

Nvidia inks deal to invest up to US$3.2 billion in Corning.

Nvidia is partnering with Corning, which manufactures glass used in smartphones as well as optical fiber and hardware components for data centers, to build three new factories in North Carolina and Texas focused on optical technologies. As part of the arrangement, Corning has issued Nvidia warrants to purchase up to US$3.2 billion of Corning’s stock. The biggest chunk of the warrants are priced at US$180 per share, higher than Corning’s closing stock price on Tuesday of US$162.10. But Corning stock jumped 12% on Wednesday to US$181.57. Nvidia’s stock, meanwhile, rose 6% as the stock market rallied across the board. The new factories would increase Corning’s optical manufacturing capacity in the United States by tenfold, the companies say. Corning’s stock has risen more than 300% over the last 12 months as its fast-growing optical communications segment accelerated its top line growth rate to 18% in the March quarter, from 13% in the same period a year ago. https://tinyurl.com/2t59t78v

Robinhood’s venture fund IPO attracted 150,000+ retail investors, CEO says.

Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev is touting the success of the fintech’s new Ventures Fund I, which allows retail investors to invest in private tech companies like Stripe, Oura, Databricks, OpenAI, and others, through a publicly traded fund listed on the NYSE. “We had something like over 150,000 retail investors participate in the IPO, so it’s quite democratized,” noted Tenev in an interview at The Wall Street Journal’s Future of Everything conference this week. The fund, which launched in March, arrives at a time when the term “unicorn,” which once referred to the rare billion-dollar startup, has become outdated. When AI model providers like OpenAI and Anthropic are raising capital at valuations of US$850+ billion to US$900 billion, another word besides “unicorn” is needed. “We call them frontier companies,” said Tenev, explaining how Robinhood differentiates these larger, private companies from other startups. “There are private companies that are raising capital at valuations in the high hundreds of billions. You’re going to see, perhaps, multiple private companies getting into the trillions [in valuation] before the IPO — before retail investors can participate,” he said. Robinhood’s initial fund has exposure to many tech companies that have yet to go public, including most recently OpenAI, which joins Mercor, Ramp, Airwallex, Boom, and others. Tenev believes the new fund makes sense as part of Robinhood’s broader mission to democratize access to markets for retail investors. Initially, the company did this through its zero-commission trades, which significantly increased retail participation in the public markets. Now it sees investing in large, private companies as the next step. “You can think of [the new fund] as a publicly traded venture capital firm with daily liquidity. No accreditation requirements and no carry,” Tenev said in the interview. “So just a competitive management fee, no carry — which, for those of you familiar with venture capital, typically, when you invest in a fund as an LP, you pay a management fee, but there’s also a carry of typically around 20%, which means 20% of your profits go to the fund manager.” Tenev believes that, due to the size of these companies, retail investors should be able to get in earlier than the IPO — especially given how many companies are choosing to wait to go public. “The aspiration is, if you’re a company raising a seed round and a Series A round — so, just first capital — retail should be a big chunk of that round, much like it now is in the public markets,” Tenev said. “And we should let those people in at the ground floor, so that they can actually benefit from this potential appreciation that’s increasingly happening in the private markets,” he added. https://tinyurl.com/mw72bv8z

China’s national AI fund in talks to invest in DeepSeek.

China’s national artificial intelligence fund is in talks to invest in DeepSeek in a funding round that is now expected to value the company at more than 300 billion yuan (US$44 billion), according to two people with knowledge of the discussions. DeepSeek, owned by Chinese hedge fund High-Flyer Capital Management, kicked off its first fundraising last month, and the valuation shot up from US$10 billion to US$20 billion in a matter of days as investors were clamoring to get a piece of the startup. The national AI fund, established last year in Shanghai, has 60 billion yuan (US$8.8 billion) to invest in the country’s AI sector. The fund is backed by China’s semiconductor investment fund, colloquially known as the Big Fund. The Financial Times earlier reported that the Big Fund is in talks to lead the funding round that values DeepSeek at about US$45 billion. https://tinyurl.com/mpwn82n5

GameStop makes bid to buy eBay for US$56 billion.

Video game retailer GameStop said Sunday that it had offered to buy e-commerce site eBay for US$125 a share in cash and stock, a 20% increase from eBay’s share price Friday. The games retailer said it’s now built a 5% position in eBay, which it started to accumulate on February 4. GameStop CEO Ryan Cohen said in a letter to eBay’s chairman that he planned reduce eBay’s annualized costs by US$2 billion in the first year, a move that would increase its earnings per share by 83%. The company said it had a US$20 billion commitment from TD Securities to secure the debt financing. Cohen told The Wall Street Journal that it eBay didn’t accept the proposal, he was willing to wage a proxy fight. Cohen, who took the helm of GameStop in late 2023, said in January that he was searching for potential acquisition targets in the retail sector to expand its own business beyond selling games in stores—an idea some of its prominent shareholders, including Michael Burry, have encouraged. After the Wall Street Journal first reported on Cohen’s plans Friday, GameStop’s shares rose 6% and eBay’s shares jumped 13%. GameStop is trying to swallow a much larger company, however. EBay’s enterprise value was just under US$50 billion at the end of the trading day on Friday, a figure that incorporates the company’s US$4 billion or so in cash on hand and subtracts its outstanding debt of US$7 billion. GameStop, in comparison, is worth just US$7 billion, even after factoring in its US$9 billion cash pile. EBay’s revenue rose 8% to US$11 billion in 2025. GameStop, which made US$3.6 billion in revenue in the year to January, has been struggling with declining sales growth for the last several years. https://tinyurl.com/eb3saspx

Cisco to acquire agent security startup Astrix.

Cisco announced its intent to acquire Israeli cybersecurity startup Astrix. The company didn’t announce an acquisition price. The Information reported that Cisco was in talks to acquire Astrix for between US$250 million to US$350 million, at least a 25% increase from the startup’s last valuation of roughly US$200 million. The agreement follows a rush of interest in AI agents, or software that can carry out tasks on behalf of users, as well as products that protect companies against rogue agents. Astrix sells software that monitors and secures AI agents. Cisco said it intends to integrate the company’s tech into its identity intelligence platform. The Tel Aviv-based Astrix previously raised US$85 million in venture capital funding from firms including Bessemer Venture Partners, CRV and Menlo Ventures. The acquisition, if it closes, would be one of the first exits from a joint Menlo-Anthropic fund, the US$100 million Anthology Fund, which formed in 2024 to back AI startups. https://tinyurl.com/3vzhshh7

Samsung crosses US$1 trillion valuation as AI frenzy drives historic rally, lifting shares over 15%.

Shares of Samsung Electronics surged more than 15% Wednesday, pushing the chip giant’s market capitalization past the US$1 trillion mark as investors continued to pile into artificial intelligence-linked stocks. Samsung became the second Asian company to cross the US$1 trillion mark, after TSMC. The company first crossed that US$1 trillion market capitalization threshold on Feb. 26, according to FactSet data. The company’s stock has breached a record high and is on course for the largest single-day gain on record, data from FactSet showed. The rally followed Samsung Electronics’ record first-quarter earnings last week. Operating profit surged more than eightfold to 57.2 trillion won, while revenue climbed to a record 133.9 trillion Korean won. Samsung’s first-quarter operating profit also topped its full-year 2025 profit of 43.6 trillion won. The gains also followed a Bloomberg report that Apple has held exploratory talks with Samsung and Intel to produce chips for Apple devices in the U.S., potentially diversifying beyond longtime supplier TSMC. https://tinyurl.com/3kax4cye

Microsoft shares sink after TCI cuts US$8 billion stake.

The hedge fund TCI cut almost all of its US$8 billion stake in Microsoft, the Financial Times reported Friday, due to what CEO Christopher Hohn described in an investor letter as “uncertainty over Microsoft’s competitive position in the future” as AI threatens to replace existing software like Office. TCI, which reduced its position in Microsoft from 10% to 1%, also noted “risks” facing Microsoft’s Azure cloud unit, the FT reported. Azure revenue accelerated in the first quarter of 2026, but some investors have been spooked by Microsoft’s disclosure that a single customer—OpenAI—made up more than 40% of its Azure revenue backlog. Microsoft shares were down more than 1% on Friday. The company’s shares have slid roughly 12% since the start of the year as investors worry AI could disrupt its business. https://tinyurl.com/289hyvxf

Datadog shares jump 30% after CEO says AI is boosting sales.

Datadog reported revenue grew 32% to more than US$1 billion in its March quarter—up 7% from last year—and raised its full-year projection to 26% growth, from the 20% it issued a few months ago. Shares of Datadog rose around 30% after its earnings report, suggesting investors’ fears about AI’s impact on business software providers could be subsiding. AI is becoming a business driver for Datadog, which sells software for tracking the performance of cloud applications and spotting security threats, CEO Olivier Pomel said on an earnings call. Pomel said that while only 20% of his customers are using Datadog in conjunction with other AI providers’ products—for tasks like monitoring utilization of GPUs—those customers account for about 80% of Datadog’s annual recurring revenue, the value of its contracts over the next 12 months. Last week, shares of team collaboration software provider Atlassian jumped 25% after its earnings, when the company said its AI search tool was boosting sales of its other products. https://tinyurl.com/y5zwx5bd

AMD shares rise 16% as AI hardware growth accelerates.

AI server chip maker Advanced Micro Devices said Tuesday that its revenue growth would accelerate eight percentage points to 46% in the current quarter, after rising 38% to US$10.3 billion in the first quarter. Shares rose 16% in after-hours trading. Sales of AMD’s AI graphics processing units are boosting its growth as cloud providers and developers such as Meta and Microsoft agree to purchase its flagship product, hoping to reduce their reliance on more-expensive chips from Nvidia. AMD is preparing to ship an AI rack system, including central processing units, that aims to compete with racks Nvidia sells. CEO Lisa Su said GPU sales forecasts for next year were higher than AMD anticipated and that sales of CPUs for data centers were growing faster than expected, reaching 70% growth in the current quarter. She said the total addressable market for AMD’s CPUs had doubled to US$120 billion by 2030 compared to her prior TAM estimate six months ago. Nvidia is nearly seven times bigger than AMD in revenue and is growing its revenue about 30 percentage points faster than AMD (while also experiencing accelerating sales), underscoring the gap in performance. Still, AMD shares have been on a tear as investors bet on a market that’s large enough to accommodate numerous AI server chip designers. Before the post-earnings bump, AMD shares were up nearly 60% this year and up more than three and half times in the past 12 months, giving it a nearly US$580 billion market capitalization. Nvidia shares are up about 4% this year. https://tinyurl.com/3mbnj4jc

Palantir shares flat after earnings despite U.S. sales growth.

Palantir reported revenue grew 85% to more than US$1.6 billion in its March quarter—a 15% uptick from last quarter—and raised its full-year projection to 71% growth, from the 60% it issued a few months ago. Palantir is continuing to benefit as more U.S.-based companies and U.S. government agencies look to better organize their data for analytics and AI projects. Revenue from U.S. commercial customers grew 133% to US$595 million compared to last year, while revenue from U.S. government agencies increased 84% to US$687 million compared to last year. Together, these segments grew 104% in the quarter compared to last year, up from 93% last quarter. On the earnings call, Palantir CEO Alex Karp repeatedly derided the prevalence of “AI slop,” an apparent reference to AI that isn’t consistently accurate and has minimal value to customers. He appeared to take a swipe at OpenAI’s new joint venture with 19 private equity firms and consultancies, known as The Deployment Company, asserting that its focus is very similar to that of Palantir. Palantir shares were flat in after-hours trading. The company’s stock has dropped 18% since the start of the year, amid a broader selloff of enterprise software stocks. But Palantir CTO Shyam Sankar argued that AI is a “massive tailwind” for Palantir because the company has always positioned itself as an alternative to traditional business software providers, he said, without naming them. https://tinyurl.com/3mmfubsn

CoreWeave reports US$100 billion backlog, stock falls 9%.

CoreWeave shares were down 9% in after-hours trading, after the firm said its capital expenditures would be slightly higher this year because of rising supply costs. CoreWeave’s revenue roughly doubled in the first quarter to US$2 billion, while its operating loss jumped to US$144 million. But the cloud provider said its revenue backlog has reached nearly US$100 billion, up from US$67 billion at the end of last year. The metric, which represents demand that has not yet been delivered, is a closely watched figure among cloud providers, who are all racing to secure contracts to rent out Nvidia GPUs to artificial intelligence developers. In the past few weeks, CoreWeave has signed multi-year contracts totalling tens of billions of dollars, including with Meta Platforms and Anthropic. The firm also said it has more than 1 gigawatt of “active power” and expects that number to reach 8 gigawatts from 2030. https://tinyurl.com/yswvfc5f

ServiceNow expects revenue will double to US$32 billion by 2030.

ServiceNow executives on Monday said they expect the company’s subscription revenue will rise to a range between US$30 billion and US$32 billion by 2030, or about double the roughly US$15.7 billion in subscription revenue the software company has projected for this fiscal year. Demand for its new AI products would drive that growth. The enterprise software firm projected the market for AI ‘governance’ platforms that organize, monitor, and manage AI agents for other companies will reach US$600 billion by 2028. The projection assumes that ServiceNow will succeed in its strategy of selling software for managing AI agents in addition to its current role of primarily helping companies track and manage IT issues, which it estimates to represent a smaller, US$39 billion market. ServiceNow is one of many software firms pitching themselves as AI management dashboards. “ServiceNow is not a traditional SaaS company. We’re the orchestration layer AI agents run on, not the software they replace,” said CFO Gina Mastantuono as part of her pitch to investors during the company’s financial analyst day in Las Vegas. Another reason for its 2030 sales guidance: ServiceNow also said its new pricing tiers announced in early April will raise spending from customers by 20% to 30% on average, adding to its revenues as soon as this year. ServiceNow stock has fallen 40% so far this year as investors have fretted that AI tools from startups such as Anthropic and OpenAI will reduce demand for traditional software. Shares rose 1% in after hours trading Monday. https://tinyurl.com/mr46nau5

Uber reports steady growth in revenue.

Uber reported steady growth in the first quarter, with gross bookings—the dollar value of all transactions on the service—rising 25%, although only 21% on a constant currency basis. Uber’s free cash flow was essentially flat at US$2.286 billion. An accounting change in the UK, relating to how revenue is classified, meant that Uber’s revenue from its mobility service barely grew on a constant currency basis. Revenue overall grew 10% on that basis, driven by a 28% lift in delivery revenue. Uber CFO Balaji Krishnamurthy said Uber had “re-upped our investment” in AI after underestimating the impact of AI tools. Krishnamurthy acnowledged that “when we set our budgets for 2026 in November, we underestimated the amount of impact” AI would have. He said increases in the budget were being offset against slower growth in hiring. https://tinyurl.com/2s3mecvk

Snap’s ad revenue growth slowed to 3% in first quarter.

Snap’s revenue growth accelerated to 12% in the first quarter, lifted by strong growth in the social media firm’s small subscriptions business. Advertising, which contributes the bulk of Snap’s revenue, grew just 3%, a slower rate than the previous quarter. The anemic growth in advertising suggests Snap has not overcome its main hurdles, relating to the limited appeal of its mostly young audience to advertisers. But subscription revenues is an increasingly important part of Snap’s business, accounting for 19% of the total in the first quarter. In a letter to shareholders, Snap said it was seeing some signs of improvement in its ad business, particularly among small to medium sized businesses, but noted that large advertisers in North America “remained a headwind.” Snap projected 14% revenue growth in the second quarter. https://tinyurl.com/yc228np8

Coinbase revenue fell 31% as crypto market slumps.

Coinbase, the biggest U.S. crypto exchange, reported first-quarter revenue of US$1.4 billion, down 31% from a year ago amid a crypto market downturn. Shares fell 5% in after-hour trading. The company’s net loss in the quarter was US$394 million, down from a net profit of US$65.6 million a year ago but smaller than a loss of US$667 million in the prior quarter. Monthly transacting users fell 15% to 8.2 million. It has US$10.2 billion in cash and cash equivalents. The company’s prediction market reached US$100 million in annualized revenue as of March. Earlier this week, Coinbase announced it’s cutting 14% of jobs, affecting about 700 people. The company said today it continues to commit to generate positive adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization across market cycles and plans to “dynamically adjust” its expense base in response to market conditions and revenue opportunities. https://tinyurl.com/fpufb7vr

Coinbase to cut 14% jobs, citing market conditions and AI.

Coinbase, the biggest U.S. crypto exchange, said it plans to cut 14% of jobs, or about 700 staff, to manage costs in the market downturn and improve efficiency using artificial intelligence. Shares rose 4% in early market trading. The cut will reduce layers and eliminate “pure managers,” as every leader must also be an individual contributor, CEO Brian Armstrong said in a tweet Tuesday morning. With the help of AI, there will be “one person teams,” with engineers, designers and product managers all in one role. The job cuts will be completed in the second quarter and the company will incur up to US$60 million in restructuring expenses. Coinbase’s move followed crypto exchange Gemini, which cut 30% of jobs, and crypto.com, which cut 12% of its workforce, this year. In the fourth quarter last year, Coinbase’s revenue fell 21% while net loss was US$667 million. https://tinyurl.com/546sz78u

Cloudlare cites AI in cutting a fifth of its workforce.

Cloudflare said it is cutting about a fifth of its workforce, joining a growing list of tech companies that have cited AI as a reason to slash jobs. The company, whose content delivery network is used by many of the world’s websites, announced the plans on Thursday as it reported quarterly financial results and projections that sent its stock down more than 15% in after-hours trading. The shares had gained more than 30% this year through Thursday’s close. Cloudflare, whose workforce totalled 5,156 at the end of 2025, said it will cut more than 1,100 employees globally. In a memo to employees posted on Cloudflare’s website, CEO Matthew Prince and President Michelle Zatlyn said the decision was driven by growing AI usage, which they said has increased by more than 600% in the last three months. “That means we have to be intentional in how we architect our company for the agentic AI era in order to supercharge the value we deliver to our customers and to honor our mission to help build a better Internet for everyone, everywhere,” they wrote. https://tinyurl.com/7uf945ta

OpenAI fast-tracking AI phone for 2027 launch, says Kuo.

Late last month, Kuo revealed OpenAI’s work on a smartphone, contradicting earlier reports that the company had no plans to enter the mobile market. Kuo said MediaTek and Qualcomm are the chosen chip partners and Luxshare Precision Industry is the exclusive manufacturing partner, with mass production scheduled for 2028. Reasons for Kuo’s revised 1H27 production target are now said to include OpenAI’s planned initial public offering (i.e. a compelling hardware product could strengthen its story to investors if it goes public) and intensifying competition in AI agent phones. Kuo says MediaTek appears “better positioned to become the sole processor supplier,” with the device set to use a customized version of the Dimensity 9600, which will apparently be built on TSMC’s N2P node in 2H26. The device’s “headline spec” will allegedly be its image signal processor, featuring an enhanced HDR pipeline that improves real-world sensing – or what the AI “perceives” through the camera. The phone will also use two AI processors for handling different tasks (e.g. vision and language simultaneously), fast memory and storage, and security features to isolate processes. The original goal was to release the device later this year, but in November that roadmap got pushed back to “less than two years.” The last we heard, Ive’s first OpenAI device was revealed to be a smart speaker with a camera, set to come out in early 2027. Other OpenAI products reportedly in development include smart glasses, a smart lamp, and potentially earbuds, but the roadmap is supposed to be further out for those. If any of these devices eventually launch, OpenAI will become a direct hardware rival against several Apple product lines – Apple is rumored to be also working on smart glasses, as well as AirPods with cameras, an AI pendant, and a smart home hub with enhanced Siri capabilities. https://tinyurl.com/nh4fnfud

U.S. Commerce Department agency to test Google, Microsoft, xAI models.

On Tuesday, a small agency within the U.S. Department of Commerce announced new agreements with Google, Microsoft and xAI that will allow the federal government to conduct national security testing on frontier AI models before they’re released to the public. The office, the Center for AI Standards and Innovation, said in a press release that the new partnerships will allow the government to assess potential risks, as well as the models’ capabilities. CAISI previously announced similar agreements with Anthropic and OpenAI in August 2024. The office—which was previously known as AI Safety Institute until the Trump administration renamed it—said that it has completed more than 40 such evaluations. “These expanded industry collaborations help us scale our work in the public interest at a critical moment,” said CAISI Director Chris Fall in a statement. The announcement comes a day after reports that the White House is weighing measures to establish guardrails and review processes for new AI models, including a potential executive order that would establish a working group of industry executives and government officials. https://tinyurl.com/2t5jw9z4

Circle jumps nearly 20% on Clarity Act compromise that preserves stablecoin rewards.

Shares of Circle surged after lawmakers over the weekend struck a compromise on the market structure bill known as the CLARITY Act, preserving stablecoin reward programs under certain conditions. On Friday, key language in the proposed crypto legislation was updated to restrict crypto companies from paying savings account-like interest or yield to users on passive stablecoin deposits – leaving that function to traditional banks. However, the bill does allow rewards as usage-driven incentives that could be tied to activity like trading, transactions or staking, as expected. The stablecoin issuer Circle closed 19.9% higher, while Coinbase, the main distributor of Circle’s USDC stablecoin, gained 6.1%. BitGo and Galaxy Digital rose 10.3% and 3.8%, respectively. Bitcoin rose more than 1% to about US$79,000, after the flagship cryptocurrency topped US$80,000 over the weekend for the first time since January. Earning yield, usually in the form of rewards, on stablecoins like USDC and others has been a key incentive for users to hold the coins – similar to the interest earned on cash sitting in a bank account. The revised language is a relative win for Circle and Coinbase. However, it could pressure smaller crypto platforms that have leaned heavily on high-yield deposit products to attract users. The development also aligns with a wider industry shift away from return-seeking products and services and toward crypto’s use in upgrading financial infrastructure. https://tinyurl.com/2rhkvxxr

Bank trade groups say stablecoin reward compromise ‘falls short’.

Banking trade groups said the proposed language on stablecoin yield in the crypto bill, the Clarity Act, “falls short of” addressing their concerns around the risk of deposit flight, suggesting they are not yet satisfied with the bill. The statement is a surprise given that crypto companies, including Coinbase, have touted the language as a compromise reached between banks and crypto groups. Earlier, the improved prospects of passing a bill helped lift Coinbase’s stock by 6% and Circle’s stock by 20% Monday. The proposed language, revealed on Friday, bans crypto platforms from paying rewards that are “functionally equivalent” to the payment of deposit interest, but it allows for rewards under a list of permissible activities. “Senators Tillis and Alsobrooks are seeking to achieve the correct policy goal – prohibiting the payment of yield and interest on stablecoins; however, the proposed language falls short of that goal,” five powerful bank groups including American Bankers Association and Bank Policy Institute said. Banks have said that if stablecoins pay interest, depositors might withdraw their money from banks, potentially lowering lending in the economy. Bank trade groups said they will share suggestions for “strengthening the proposed language” in the coming days. It said the language permits crypto exchanges to pay yield for users in a membership program, a “significant loophole that must be addressed.” Coinbase currently pays 3.5% reward on users’ USDC holdings under its monthly membership. https://tinyurl.com/yc2y8exb

Apple and Intel have reached “preliminary” chip manufacturing deal.

Apple has reached “a preliminary agreement” with Intel in recent months for manufacturing some of its chips, The Wall Street Journal reported. Earlier, this week Bloomberg reported that Apple was exploring such a partnership with Intel and Samsung. A deal with one of the companies would help Apple diversify some of its chip manufacturing away from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., which Apple has relied on for more than a decade to produce its chips. Apple has been dealing with chip supply constraints, holding back sales for its latest iPhones and some versions of the Mac, the company said for its March quarterly earnings. Intel is attempting to draw in external customers for its chip fabrication business under new CEO Lip-Bu Tan. The company’s stock rose more than 15% on the news. https://tinyurl.com/4a8ddb9f

SpaceX has a US$55 billion plan to build AI chips in Texas.

Elon Musk’s plans to get into the AI chip manufacturing business are going to be costly. As the The New York Times and CNBC report, SpaceX is planning to invest at least US$55 billion into its “Terafab” chip plant in Austin, Texas. That’s according to the details of a public hearing notice filed in Grimes County, Texas, for a meeting to request tax breaks for the project. The company says that if additional phases are constructed, its investment could someday balloon to US$119 billion total. When Musk initially announced the project in March, he shared ambitious plans for it to produce enough chips to support up to 200 gigawatts per year of computing power on Earth, and up to one terawatt in space. SpaceX is also trying to expand its data center footprint on Earth, and currently operates a “Colossus” data center in Memphis, Tennessee, that recently signed an agreement to power Anthropic’s AI models. The Texas plant will be run by SpaceX and Tesla and make chips for both companies, which Musk has said will be used for AI, robotics, and space-based data centers. Last month, Intel announced that it would help design and build Terafab, saying, “Our ability to design, fabricate, and package ultra-high-performance chips at scale will help accelerate Terafab’s aim to produce 1 TW/year of compute to power future advances in AI and robotics.” https://tinyurl.com/4xzncx63

Sony partners with TSMC in effort to rein in chipmaking costs.

Sony Group Corp. plans a new joint venture with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. as the first step toward what it called a fab-light approach to semiconductor production. The Japanese company’s chip arm Sony Semiconductor Solutions Corp. and TSMC are partnering to develop and build next-generation image sensors for robots and cars, the two companies said on Friday. The project will get its start in Kumamoto, where TSMC has set up its own chip fabrication plant, and may expand further if the Japanese government provides backing. https://tinyurl.com/yc8483r6