November 23, 2025: That Escalated Quickly

Last week, Dow Jones fell 1.9%, S&P 500 index was down 1.95%, and Nasdaq Composite was down 2.7%. Even though Friday provided investors with some respite, narrative has quickly shifted bearish in the past few weeks. Shifting odds of a Fed rate cut in December, could be one factor driving volatility, along with ongoing skittishness pertaining to the AI trade. Nvidia’s October quarter underscored why AI leaders keep funding the buildout. Revenue rose 62% to US$57 billion with growth re-accelerating, FCF hit US$22.1 billion, and it committed to US$26 billion of cloud server rentals over six years, making it one of the world’s largest GPU renters. Microsoft and Nvidia are also putting US$15 billion into Anthropic, which in turn will spend at least US$30 billion on Azure capacity. XAI is targeting a US$15 billion raise at a US$230 billion valuation. Amazon is selling US$15 billion of AI-linked bonds. At the same time, AI bubble anxiety is spreading. Sundar Pichai acknowledged “irrationality” in AI valuations. A Bank of America survey showed net 20% of fund managers think capex is excessive and >50% now call AI stocks a bubble, with AI crash risk topping macro as biggest tail risk. Credit markets are tightening at the margin, with tech bond spreads widening. Oracle CDS is now a favored hedge on AI downside, and several investment-grade issues seeing 40%+ order attrition at final pricing. Yet insiders are leaning in: corporate insider buying is running at the fastest pace since May. In Canada, Toronto-based Tenstorrent is nearing a Fidelity-led raise of at least US$800 million at a ~US$3.2 billion pre-money valuation. Brookfield launched a US$10 billion Brookfield Artificial Intelligence Infrastructure Fund (targeting up to US$100 billion including co-investors) to buy power, land, data centers and GPUs, with Kuwait’s US$1 trillion fund and Nvidia as anchor partners.

Tenstorrent nears US$3 billion valuation in Fidelity-led round.

Chip startup Tenstorrent has been in talks to raise at least US$800 million in a deal led by current investor Fidelity Management, according to two people with direct knowledge of the talks. The investment would value the Toronto-based firm at around US$3.2 billion before the investment, a 60% increase from its valuation not including the investment last year, one of the people said. The funding round highlights continued investor interest in startups hoping to unseat Nvidia’s domination of the white-hot market for specialized chips that run AI models. That’s despite the fact that rival chipmakers have yet to take much business from Nvidia. The startup only began earning meaningful revenue this year after selling systems containing its chips to customers in Japan, according to one of the people. The company said in December that it has done around US$150 million worth of deals to date. Tenstorrent, which has around 1,100 employees, uses RISC-V, an open-source design for central processing units, which compete with CPUs based on designs by Arm and Intel. Tenstorrent has previously raised over US$1 billion in funding from investors including Samsung Securities, AFW Partners and Fidelity. https://tinyurl.com/mu47savx

Brookfield plans US$100 billion in AI purchases.

Brookfield, one of the largest infrastructure investors, said it would acquire up to US$100 billion in energy, land, data center and computing assets used to power artificial intelligence. Kuwait’s US$1 trillion sovereign wealth fund and Nvidia will invest in a new Brookfield Artificial Intelligence Infrastructure Fund, which has raised US$5 billion of a US$10 billion target, the firm said Wednesday. Brookfield plans to tap additional co-investors and other sources of financing to reach its US$100 billion goal. It said an up to US$5 billion investment in fuel cells made by Bloom Energy will be part of the fund. The firm, with more than US$1 trillion in assets, is the latest large asset manager, alongside firms like Blackrock and Blackstone, to pour funding into the resources needed to develop and run AI. The firm said it’s already invested more than US$100 billion in digital infrastructure and power assets. Brookfield also said it will start a cloud company called Radiant that will buy Nvidia chips for national AI projects. https://tinyurl.com/52eh2hyt

Vancouver startup with Gelsinger tie raises $25 Million to tackle AI power surge.

PowerLattice’s play is a tiny, specialized “chiplet” that puts power supply snug in the main processing module, reducing compute power needs by more than 50%, it says. https://tinyurl.com/ya96xerb

Telus unveils new cybersecurity service targeting future quantum threats.

Telus Corp. is launching a new cybersecurity service meant to protect businesses from future digital threats related to quantum computing technology. The company says it recognizes that quantum computers may eventually be powerful enough to break current encryption methods, which would pose a significant threat to data security. It says it’s unveiling a proactive solution now using advanced encryption technology to help businesses and government agencies stay ahead of evolving cyber threats. The Quantum-Safe VPN service provides enhanced customer data protection against future cyber attacks to meet requirements from global security organizations, along with long-term protection for intellectual property and sensitive data. The service uses advanced encryption methods recommended by leading security organizations and offers flexibility to adapt as new security standards emerge. Telus says this approach protects sensitive information from being captured today and potentially decoded by future quantum computers. https://tinyurl.com/4h7sd39a

Lackluster returns dampen outlook for US firms waiting on IPOs.

The pullback in the US stock market this month is hitting initial public offerings disproportionately hard, a further complication for companies still looking to go public in the remainder of the year. The stock prices of recent listings such as Gemini Space Station Inc., Fermi Inc., Navan Inc. and Stubhub Holdings Inc. have quickly faded to levels below where they went public. Even this year’s high-flying debuts like CoreWeave Inc., Circle Internet Group Inc. and Figma Inc. have faced a bruising recently. All this has significantly dented 2025’s IPO returns. This year’s IPOs on US exchanges — excluding closed-end funds and blank-check companies — returned 9.7% on a weighted average basis. That has trailed the S&P 500’s gain of nearly 15% so far this year. It’s an untimely development given optimism that the end of the record-long US government shutdown last week would pave the path for a final push of IPO action in the twilight of the year. After a shutdown-induced delay, at least a half a dozen companies whose paperwork was well-advanced are theoretically positioned to begin marketing and pricing their IPOs so that they can debut before Christmas. A few companies, including Missouri’s Central Bancompany Inc., are pricing their IPOs before Thanksgiving Day. But those not already out in front of investors will likely have to wait until December given how tricky it is to run a full marketing effort and go public before the late November holiday in the US. That said, investors’ dialing back their risk and protecting their portfolio by eschewing new investments is not an unusual phenomenon in the final months of the year. While late-year IPO aspirants face some tough decisions, no one is panicking yet that the IPO market is about head back into a deep freeze. https://tinyurl.com/bddtz643

Nvidia says AI chip revenue growth is accelerating.

Nvidia’s revenue rose 62% to US$57 billion in the three months ended October compared to the same period a year earlier, largely from sales of AI chips and related equipment. Remarkably, its sales growth accelerated 8 percentage points compared to the July quarter, and Nvidia has projected even faster growth—65.4%—in the current fiscal quarter. The result could ease fears about investors bidding up prices of AI-related equities too high, relative to the revenue AI is producing for consumers and businesses. It comes after Nvidia’s primary customers, including Microsoft, Meta and Google, increased projected spending on data centers that will use Nvidia chips. Nvidia shares rose 4% in after-hours trading. They were up around 34% this year before the end of normal trading Wednesday. Shares are trading at nearly 32 times its expected earnings over the next year, down from 36 times forward earnings as of three months ago. That means its shares have been getting cheaper even as its financial position strengthens. Still, four of Nvidia’s customers made up 61% of Nvidia revenue in the October quarter, which was higher percentage than in prior quarters, showing its business carries what investors refer to as concentration risk. “There’s been a lot of talk about an AI bubble. From our vantage point we see something very different,” CEO Jensen Huang said in a call with analysts. CFO Colette Kress said recent separate data center deals involving Saudi Arabia and AI startup Anthropic would further boost Nvidia growth beyond what it has already projected. Free cash flow rose 31% to US$22.1 billion compared to the year-ago period. The company, which has US$60 billion in cash, has been spending more than US$12 billion a quarter buying back its own stock while it also spends generously to fund dozens of AI startups and data centers, which will end up boosting its sales in the long run. Nvidia’s recent revenue growth looks particularly impressive compared to its distant rival AMD, which reported 36% revenue growth in the September quarter, and also in spite of Nvidia getting squeezed out of the Chinese market, which until recently was a substantial part of its business. In addition to chips, Nvidia’s sale of networking equipment that connect servers to each other continued to accelerate in the October quarter, generating more than US$8 billion of revenue. https://tinyurl.com/nvxphta8

Nvidia doubles cloud spending commitment to US$26 billion.

Nvidia said Wednesday it had struck deals to rent US$26 billion of servers from cloud providers over the next six years, doubling the cloud spending commitments it disclosed just three months ago. The cloud spending plan implies Nvidia will rent several hundred thousand of its own graphics processing units from cloud providers like Amazon and Google that purchase them. Nvidia said in a regulatory filing that it will pay US$1 billion to rent servers in the current fiscal year, US$6 billion in both 2027 and 2028, US$5 billion in 2029, and US$4 billion in both 2030 and 2031. That will make Nvidia one of the world’s biggest cloud spenders and users of GPUs. Nvidia said it might not use all of the capacity. Nvidia said some of its commitments “may be reduced, terminated or sold to others” by the cloud providers from which it rents servers. Nvidia’s spending commitment increased even though it has stepped back from its nascent cloud computing business known as DGX Cloud, which aimed to rent out GPUs to business customers. These days, Nvidia uses most of the DGX Cloud server capacity for its own internal efforts, The Information has reported. Earlier this summer, Nvidia launched another kind of cloud service, DGX Cloud Lepton, which helps businesses rent GPUs from various cloud providers. Nvidia’s cloud commitments includes its agreement to rent 10,000 of its AI chips back from cloud startup Lambda. Nvidia also rents its chips from CoreWeave and major cloud providers including Oracle and Amazon. https://tinyurl.com/bdxtx4ht

OpenAI CEO: Google’s AI breakthrough could cause ‘headwinds’ for OpenAI.

In an internal memo, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman acknowledged that Google’s recent progress in artificial intelligence could create “temporary economic headwinds” for his company. The memo anticipated Google’s launch of its Gemini 3 model, suggesting OpenAI’s once-dominant technological lead is narrowing, particularly in the crucial pretraining phase of AI model development where OpenAI has faced challenges. This competitive pressure highlights a financial disparity betwen the companies: OpenAI projects a cash burn of more than US$100 billion in the coming years, while the far more profitable Google has more resources to sustain a costly AI race. Despite these challenges, Altman assured staff OpenAI would catch up and is focusing on ambitious long-term bets, such as automating AI research. https://tinyurl.com/bddsmfz4

Microsoft, Nvidia invest in Anthropic; Anthropic to spend US$30 billion on Azure.

Microsoft will invest US$5 billion in Anthropic, and Nvidia will invest US$10 billion in the startup, the three companies announced on Tuesday. Meanwhile, Anthropic will spend at least US$30 billion to rent servers from Microsoft’s Azure cloud equipped with Nvidia chips over an unspecified period, and its models will become available for purchase on Azure for the first time, the companies said. Anthropic’s existing shareholders include Microsoft rivals Amazon and Google. Anthropic has primarily relied on cloud servers from those two firms to run its models. Anthropic said in a statement that “Amazon remains Anthropic’s primary cloud provider and training partner.” The deals show how Microsoft is deepening its ties with OpenAI’s archrival after amending its deal with OpenAI earlier this year. Microsoft, which has invested US$13 billion in OpenAI, has the rights to reuse OpenAI’s models in its own products and OpenAI has committed to spend more than US$250 billion to rent Azure servers in the coming years. Microsoft earlier this year started paying Anthropic to use its models in its products, in addition to those from OpenAI. Unlike its deal with OpenAI, Microsoft’s investment with Anthropic doesn’t grant Microsoft intellectual property rights over Anthropic’s models, according to a company spokesperson. “As an industry we need to move beyond any zero sum narrative or winner-take-all hype,” Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said in a video announcing the Anthropic deal. “The opportunity is simply too big to approach any other way.” Anthropic’s initial US$30 billion commitment will pay for roughly one gigawatt of Azure servers equipped with Nvidia’s NVIDIA Grace Blackwell and Vera Rubin chips, according to an Nvidia spokesperson. In addition, Microsoft said that Anthropic will contract up to an additional gigawatt of server capacity from Azure over an unspecified time period. A Microsoft spokesperson declined to comment on whether Microsoft plans to build additional data centers to provide Anthropic with that capacity. One gigawatt of capacity typically costs cloud providers around US$50 billion to build. https://tinyurl.com/2zwu6mp7

XAI in talks to raise US$15 billion at a US$230 billion valuation.

XAI, the artificial intelligence startup run by Elon Musk, has told shareholders that it’s planning to raise money at a US$230 billion valuation, according to two people who were notified of the terms. It intends to raise US$15 billion, according to one of the people. The financing would more than double the last valuation for the AI business, which combined with X (formerly Twitter), earlier this year. That transaction valued the company above US$100 billion. XAI, like rivals OpenAI and Anthropic, needs huge amounts of capital to secure access to the AI chips needed to train and run models. On Wednesday, Humain, owned by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, said Humain and xAI have signed an agreement to build low-cost data centers in Saudi Arabia. https://tinyurl.com/2w98pk7v

Amazon sells US$15 billion in bonds.

Amazon is expected to raise US$15 billion in a bond offering, Bloomberg reported, the latest sign of how big tech companies are tapping the debt markets to help fund enormous investments in AI. The Bloomberg report said Amazon’s offering attracted as much as US$80 billion in demand. The bond sale follows similar moves by other tech companies, most obviously Meta Platforms earlier this month. https://tinyurl.com/y32j23wm

Crypto exchange Kraken filed confidentially for IPO.

Crypto exchange Kraken said on Wednesday it has confidentially filed for an initial public offering in the U.S., moving ahead with its plan to list despite a recent-sell of crypto-related stocks. The filing comes a day after it raised US$200 million from Ken Griffin’s Citadel Securities at a US$20 billion valuation. Kraken is working with Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs on the offering, Bloomberg reported. Crypto-related IPOs have fared well in the public market earlier this year but a recent sell-off in bitcoin and other crypto stocks have weakened their prospects. Shares of stablecoin issuer Circle, which traded as high as US$263 in June, has fallen by more than 45% the past month to below US$70 while crypto exchange operator Bullish erased prior gains and has fallen below its IPO price of US$37. https://tinyurl.com/53rw5dt6

Adobe agrees to buy Semrush in US$1.9 billion deal.

Adobe agreed to acquire Semrush, a digital marketing software provider, for US$1.9 billion as the design giant pivots to artificial intelligence. Adobe will pay US$12 a share in cash for Semrush, which had a market capitalization of over US$1 billion as of Tuesday. The deal with Semrush, which offers tools to help businesses to understand how they appear on AI search engines, could help Adobe to better serve marketers and boost its AI offerings, the company said in a press release. Shares of Adobe have fallen more than 20% this year, as investors grow wary of the impact of artificial intelligence on the design giant. Adobe is investing in AI products and also held talks in recent months to buy London-based Synthesia, an AI startup that generates video avatars of people for about US$3 billion. Centerview Partners and Davis Polk & Wardwell advised Semrush on the transaction. Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz advised Adobe. https://tinyurl.com/mrykw5pu

Google boss says trillion-dollar AI investment boom has ‘elements of irrationality’.

Every company would be affected if the AI bubble were to burst, the head of Google’s parent firm Alphabet has told the BBC. Speaking exclusively to BBC News, Sundar Pichai said while the growth of artificial intelligence (AI) investment had been an “extraordinary moment”, there was some “irrationality” in the current AI boom. It comes amid fears in Silicon Valley and beyond of a bubble as the value of AI tech companies has soared in recent months and companies spend big on the burgeoning industry. Asked whether Google would be immune to the impact of the AI bubble bursting, Mr Pichai said the tech giant could weather that potential storm, but also issued a warning. “I think no company is going to be immune, including us,” he said. In a wide-ranging exclusive interview at Google’s California headquarters, he also addressed energy needs, slowing down climate targets, UK investment, the accuracy of his AI models, and the effect of the AI revolution on jobs. The interview comes as scrutiny on the state of the AI market has never been more intense. But Mr Pichai said Google’s unique model of owning its own “full stack” of technologies – from chips to YouTube data, to models and frontier science – meant it was in a better position to ride out any AI market turbulence. https://tinyurl.com/y23d3nfk

Fund managers warn AI investment boom has gone too far.

A net 20 per cent of fund managers surveyed this month by Bank of America said companies were spending too much on their investments — the first time this has been a majority view in data running back to 2005. “This jump is driven by concerns over the magnitude and financing of the AI capex boom,” said BofA analysts. The tech spending boom is also reshaping credit markets: US companies have issued more than US$200 billion worth of bonds this year to finance their AI-related projects amid warnings over a “flood” of further issuance. Anton Dombrovskiy, fixed income portfolio specialist at T Rowe Price, said “public and private credit seems to have become a major source of funding for AI investments, and its rapid growth raised some concerns”. Some analysts have previously warned that the rise in capital expenditure by some of the so-called hyperscalers could begin to weigh on their share buyback programmes, which have helped to support equity prices this year. Analysts at Barclays estimated that cumulative AI-related investment by hyperscalers and smaller companies could reach the equivalent of more than 10 per cent of US GDP by 2029. More than 50 per cent of the fund managers surveyed by BofA, who between them manage about US$500 billion in investor assets, said that AI stocks were already in a bubble. Some 45 per cent saw that as the biggest “tail risk” to markets and the global economy, up from 33 per cent last month, and overshadowing other threats such as inflation or a US consumer crunch. https://tinyurl.com/3ue9caje

AI bubble and growth fears are creeping into US credit markets.

Risk premiums on everything from investment-grade corporates to junk bonds are hovering near their highest levels in weeks. On Monday, investors withdrew about 40% of bond orders on several corporate bond offerings after seeing final pricing, an unusually high level of attrition. A separate investment-grade bond sale was pulled from the market altogether last week, a rarity in that market. In the leveraged loan market, banks have struggled to sell some debt tied to acquisitions. Credit markets are far from panic, with valuations still close to multi-decade highs, but money managers say more caution is seeping in. Money managers have snatched up a large number of tech bonds in recent weeks: the companies known as hyperscalers have sold about US$121 billion of US dollar high-grade notes this year, up from about US$28 billion on average over each of the last five years, Bank of America Corp. strategists wrote on Monday. About US$81 billion of that has come since September. Money managers’ growing caution was evident in bond sales on Monday, when Amazon.com Inc. sold US$15 billion of notes, garnering about US$80 billion of orders from investors at the peak. Once pricing was revealed, that figure fell to closer to about US$47 billion, a drop of more than 40%. The decline in orders in the end was unusually steep, in a market where attrition is usually more like 20%. Three other offerings saw similar dropoffs in orders on Monday. There are other early signs of fear too. The lowest-rated bonds that usually trade, those rated in the CCC tier, saw their yields climb to 10.38% on Monday, the highest since late August. Risk premiums for the securities also climbed to their widest in about three months. The Markit CDX North America High Yield Index, which falls as risk increases, declined to about 106.4, its lowest since June. Even with these signs of weakness, the average spread on a US high-grade corporate bond was about 0.83 percentage point, or 83 basis points on Monday, according to Bloomberg index data. That’s still relatively low — the average for the last decade is 1.17 percentage point. To some investors, that’s the problem: bond valuations are still too high to offer much upside now. https://tinyurl.com/yx72856k

A hedge against ai crash emerges as Oracle CDS market explodes.

Oracle Corp., the once stodgy database giant that’s borrowed tens of billions and tethered its fortunes to the artificial intelligence boom, is quickly emerging as the credit market’s barometer for AI risk. Traders have piled into the company’s credit-default swaps in recent months as Oracle’s massive AI-related spending spree, its central role in a web of interrelated deals, and its weaker credit grades compared with players such as Microsoft Corp. or Alphabet Inc. have made the contracts the market’s preferred way to hedge — and bet against — the AI boom. The price to protect against the company defaulting on its debt for five years tripled in recent months to as high as 1.11 percentage point a year on Wednesday, or around US$111,000 for every US$10 million of principal protected, according to ICE Data Services. As AI skeptics rushed in, trading volume on the company’s CDS ballooned to about US$5 billion over the seven weeks ended Nov. 14, according to Barclays Plc credit strategist Jigar Patel. That’s up from a little more than US$200 million in the same period last year. To be clear, few suggest that the company, with a trio of investment-grade ratings and a roughly $620 billion market capitalization, is going to default on its obligations anytime soon. Rather, the thinking is that should investors’ confidence in AI falter, Oracle’s default swaps will surge even higher, minting a tidy profit for those who scooped up the derivatives and counterbalancing any losses they suffer in the broader selloff. https://tinyurl.com/hbvusjmx

Corporate insiders buying stock dip at fastest pace since May.

The worst run for stocks since April has sparked a buying spree among one of the markets’ most informed cohort: corporate insiders. Executives at publicly listed companies bought shares in their own firms over the past 30 days at the fastest clip since May, stepping in as fears of an AI-bubble sparked a broad rotation out of highly valued tech stocks into more defensive pockets. As a result, the ratio of insiders buying to selling is up to 0.5, data compiled by the Washington Service show. The spike in purchases provides some succor to bulls who’ve been lashed as the S&P 500 endures a 3.1% slide over the past week and is headed for its worst month since April. The executives are buying as other dip buyers seem skittish, with recent intraday rallies getting zapped during a five-day slide for US equities. https://tinyurl.com/2crd2ck7

Bitcoin, Strategy fall as Crypto rout deepens.

Strategy, Michael Saylor’s bitcoin-holding firm, fell 3.7% Friday amid investor concerns that the stock could get excluded from MSCI indexes. Bitcoin fell 2% and is on track for its worst monthly performance since June 2022. Strategy is down 62% from its peak in July this year while bitcoin has fallen 32% from its high in October. Many of the more speculative cryptocurrencies and the listed companies that hold them are down even more. MSCI, an index provider, published a notice last month that it’s considering excluding Strategy and other stocks with crypto holdings representing 50% or more of their total assets from MSCI Global Standard indexes, because such stocks are similar to investment funds, which aren’t eligible for index inclusion. MSCI will make a decision by Jan. 15. The notice was published Oct.10, but it got wider attention this week after JPMorgan analysts highlighted it in a research report. The news added to fears among investors that selling of these stocks might force them to dump their bitcoin holdings and trigger a downward spiral in the cryptocurrency. Saylor said Strategy is not a fund, given its software business, and that “index classification doesn’t define us.” Strategy, formerly named MicroStrategy, currently holds $55 billion worth of bitcoin. It closed at $49 billion in market cap. https://tinyurl.com/33jj8bh3

Tim Cook could step down as Apple CEO next year.

Cook, who turned 65 recently, has been CEO for 14 years and overseen both incredible growth and his fair share of controversies. He’s also largely seen as responsible for Apple’s shift to outsourcing manufacturing, which has enabled it to operate at much larger scales than it did traditionally. Rumors of Cook’s stepping down follow the retirement of Apple COO Jeff Williams, whose last day at the company was Friday. As part of that departure, there has been some shuffling of responsibilities at the executive level, including expanded roles for Services chief Eddy Cue, head of software engineering Craig Federighi, and Ternus. Regardless of who winds up taking over as CEO, it’s unlikely to be someone from outside Apple. Tim Cook has previously said there is a strong preference for an internal candidate and that the company has “very detailed succession plans.” https://tinyurl.com/y4pvzw8h

Google releases Gemini 3.0 model.

Google on Tuesday released Gemini 3.0, the long-awaited update to its flagship AI model. The new model has improved on its predecessor, Gemini 2.5, on all major AI benchmarks, including reasoning and solving problems involving mediums other than text. It is a significant improvement to its predecessor on coding, although it is still slightly behind Anthropic’s and OpenAI’s latest models on the popular benchmark swe-bench. In particular, early users have praised the new model’s ability to generate design styles. Gemini 3.0 is available to users now on the Gemini app and Google Search’s AI Mode chatbot, and to developers on a range of different enterprise products, including the newly released agentic software development tool “Gemini Antigravity.” https://tinyurl.com/9pbf97et

Meta wins FTC Antitrust case.

A judge has ruled in favor of Meta Platforms in a landmark antitrust case brought by the Federal Trade Commission, which had argued that Meta’s acquisitions of Instagram and Whatsapp violated antitrust law. In an opinion filed on Tuesday, U.S. District Judge James Boasberg said the FTC had not proved that Meta holds a monopoly in the social networking market. Boasberg said the landscape had changed a lot since the case was originally brought by the agency five years ago. “Whether or not Meta enjoyed monopoly power in the past, though, the agency must show that it continues to hold such power now,” Boasberg said in the ruling. The case went to trial earlier this year and several high-profile Meta executives, including CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Instagram head Adam Mosseri appeared in court to give testimony. “The Court’s decision today recognizes that Meta faces fierce competition,” Meta spokesperson Andy Stone said in a statement, adding that: “We look forward to continuing to partner with the Administration and to invest in America.” FTC spokesperson Joseph Simonson said in a statement: “We are deeply disappointed in this decision. The deck was always stacked against us with Judge Boasberg, who is currently facing articles of impeachment. We are reviewing all our options.” https://tinyurl.com/da35bdmy

Walmart boosts outlook, says consumer demand remains resilient.

Walmart grew sales nearly 6% to US$179.5 billion in the third quarter of its current fiscal year, helped by robust growth from the retail giant’s e-commerce and advertising businesses. Executives said Thursday that consumer demand remained mostly resilient and that the holiday shopping season was off to a good start, boosting the company’s outlook for the full year to 4.8% to 5.1% net sales growth. E-commerce sales grew 27% and advertising revenue, which includes the Vizio business Walmart acquired last year, increased 53%. Membership revenue, which includes the Walmart+ program, a competitor to Amazon’s Prime program, grew 17%. Walmart didn’t break out exact revenue figures for any of those segments. Walmart executives also highlighted the company’s partnership with OpenAI, which includes an agreement to sell Walmart and Sam’s Club products through ChatGPT. They also highlighted other AI features Walmart is testing in other markets, like a feature in Chile that creates a basket of items for customers then prompts them via WhatsApp to ask them if they want to complete the purchase. https://tinyurl.com/bddrabtd

Target plans to launch app for ChatGPT.

OpenAI and Target announced plans to make the retail giant’s app available through ChatGPT’s new app feature on Wednesday, marking the latest tie-up between the AI startup and a large retailer as OpenAI looks to help users with more shopping-related tasks. The Target partnership differs from other commerce-related deals OpenAI has announced so far, which have centered around retailers like Walmart making their products available to shop via ChatGPT’s Instant Checkout feature, instead of through their own apps. By keeping transactions in its app, Target can maintain more control over the shopper experience, a key concern for many large retailers, and also preserve its access to shopper data and ad revenue. Through the app, shoppers will be able to browse for Target products, build a cart, and check out for in-store pickup or home delivery. The companies said Target will soon add support for its Target Circle loyalty program as well as same-day delivery. In addition to the ChatGPT app launch, Target will also continue to use OpenAI’s APIs and enterprise ChatGPT subscriptions, the companies said. https://tinyurl.com/y7nndv3h