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.
