AnalytixInsight

Last week, Dow Jones was up 0.3%, S&P 500 lost 1%, and Nasdaq was down 1.6%. The week was especially volatile, AI plays were down Monday on DeepSeek concerns, and then had a strong week, until US tariff developments sent stocks down again Friday afternoon. Nvidia, Broadcom and Marvell and other U.S. firms that design AI chips each fell more than 17% Monday, Apple, however rose 3% — as some market participants suggested the DeepSeek model bodes well for on-device light LLMs. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the tech giant would invest “very heavily” in AI — even “hundreds of billions of dollars” — over the long term, during Meta’s earnings call on Wednesday. OpenAI is in talks with SoftBank to raise US$40 billion in a new funding at around a US$300 billion post-money valuation. Microsoft is one of the companies in talks to acquire TikTok’s US operations, President Donald Trump told reporters on Monday. A decision on TikTok’s future in the US is expected in 30 days. In Canada, Sophic Client, Legend Power Systems closed the final tranche of its Non-Brokered Private Placement, raising a total of $1.6 million. Sophic Client, Plurilock closed an Over-Subscribed Special Warrant Offering, for gross proceeds of nearly $5 million. Sophic Client American Aires announced record preliminary Q4/2024 performance & provided 2025 guidance. Cash and Inventory Balances were a record $6.5 million. Management expects 2025 sales in the $28 million to $32 million range, and EBITDA in the range of a $2 million loss to a $2 million profit. From January 1 through January 24, order volumes grew 111% y/y. Q4/2024 set yet another quarterly record with $8.8 million in sales, up 135% y/y. Additionally, Sophic Clients, Cybeats, Legend Power and Plurilock, all announced progress in their respective businesses.

Last week, Dow Jones gained 2.15%, S&P 500 was up 1.7%, and Nasdaq rose 1.65%, despite Friday’s modest losses. Magnificent Seven stocks Tesla, Meta, Microsoft, and Apple will report earnings this coming week, and could provide clues about planned AI capex – with read throughs to a broad range of stocks. French AI startup Mistral, often billed as Europe’s answer to OpenAI, plans to IPO. Space tech company Voyager is aiming for a multibillion-valuation IPO. OpenAI will team up with SoftBank, and Oracle to build multiple data centers for AI in the U.S. The joint venture, called the Stargate Project. The companies expect to commit US$100 billion to Stargate initially and pour up to US$500 billion into the venture over the next four years. Microsoft is also involved in Stargate as a tech partner. So are Arm and Nvidia. The massive venture will reportedly be powered, at least in part, by solar and batteries. OpenAI announced a new ChatGPT feature called “Operator” that will automate complex tasks typically done through the Web browser, such as planning trips or ordering groceries. Google invested a further US$1 billion in OpenAI rival Anthropic. Hard drive firm Seagate sees surging cloud, AI demand. Meta will boost its capex 60% this year to develop AI data centers. ByteDance plans US$20 billion capex in 2025, mostly on AI. President Trump signed an executive order on Thursday to promote digital assets in the U.S., including evaluating the possibility of creating a national digital asset stockpile. The SEC withdrew previous crypto accounting guidance. In Canada, Raymond James launched research coverage with a $3.50/share price target on Sophic Client, Kraken Robotics. Sophic Client Xcyte Digital completed the purchase of former Streamlined Communications LLC. assets. The total consideration of US$3.56 million is comprised of cash, debt and stock. Sophic Client, Boardwalktech, and LTIMindtree expanded their relationship with global banking clients.

Markets had a positive end even as US markets will be closed on Monday, suggesting the intermediate ~month long pause could be behind us. Dow Jones rose 3.7% last week, S&P 500 gained 2.9%, and Nasdaq composite was up 2.45%. Trading platform eToro has filed confidentially for a US IPO that could value the company at over US$5 billion. eCommerce company, Rokt, was valued at US$3.5 billion in secondary deal, and is targeting a 2026 IPO. Data analytics firm Databricks raised US$5 billion in debt in a new round of financing that will help the company offset taxes from employee share sales, Bloomberg reported.A.I. military start-up Anduril is planning a US$1 billion factory in Ohio. Saronic, a three-year-old startup that is aiming to make a fleet of autonomous boats for the U.S. Navy, is in talks to raise US$500 million. The Series C round talks, which remain ongoing, would value the nascent company at over US$3 billion. TSMC, the world’s largest chipmaker, reported on Thursday that net income increased 57% to US$11.6 billion in the December quarter from a year ago, thanks to strong demand for artificial intelligence chips. The EU is reassessing its probes into Apple, Meta, Google and other big tech companies. In Canada, Sophic Client Plurilock, upsized its special warrant offering to $4.8 million from $2.5 million. Edge Total Intelligence announced a non-brokered private placement for gross proceeds of ~$5 million. Sophic Client NowVertical Group executives purchased shares in the open market, and the CEO is taking an equity bonus in lieu of cash. A Fortune 500 food company signed a five-year renewal with Sophic Client Boardwalktech. Toronto-based healthcare platform League secured a US$100 million ($144 million) credit facility from RBCx. Toronto-based corporate card and expense management technology startup Float has secured a $70 million Series B round.

Last week, Dow Jones and S&P fell 1.9%, NASDAQ lost 2.3%. Both S&P and NASDAQ are down nearly 1% so far in 2025, as a hot jobs report spiked treasury yields. Anthropic in is talks to raise funding at a US$60 billion valuation — more than 3x the company’s valuation from around a year ago. Bluesky, an alternative to Elon Musk’s X, is in talks to raise money at a US$700 million valuation in a round led by Bain Capital Ventures. SoftBank’s chip designer Arm is reportedly considering acquiring Ampere computing. CrowdStrike, the cyber security company behind the botched update that took down millions of Windows PCs and servers in July, has more than recovered the US$30 billion in market value it shed in the wake of the crisis. At CES, Nvidia announced a US$3,000 personal AI supercomputer called Digits. Quantum computing stocks dropped Wednesday after Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang declared that useful quantum computers are many years away — Rigetti Computing fell 40%, IonQ shed 37%, D-Wave Quantum fell more than 30%. Microsoft is planning company-wide performance based layoffs, and investing US$3 billion in AI and cloud services in India. Online spending grew 3% to a record US$1.2 trillion over the holiday period, according to Salesforce. Disney is selling its streaming cable business Hulu + Live TV to smaller rival Fubo TV, in exchange for a 70% stake in Fubo. In Canada, conversational AI startup Cohere unveiled a preview of North, a new product that marries its large language models and search models to help corporate users work faster. Toronto-based e-commerce software aggregator Carbon6 Technologies will be acquired by SPS Commerce for US$210 million. Shopify acquired the Shop.ca domain from Emerge Commerce. Sophic Client, Xcyte Digital announced a new CFO.