As CEO Peter Beck laid out for Sherwood in an interview, Neutron is the cornerstone of the money-losing company’s plans to leap to profitability, as it will enable Rocket Lab to enter the market for larger, and more lucrative, payload launches. That market is currently dominated by Elon Musk’s SpaceX.

In January, one of Neutron’s fuel tanks ruptured during a test, necessitating construction of another, as well as some design changes. During the company’s post earnings conference call last night, Beck told analysts Neutron’s first launch is now expected during the fourth quarter of 2026.

“Neutron is still scheduled to come to market in an incredibly aggressive timeframe,” Beck said.

Judging by the stumble for the shares, which by around 1:30 p.m. ET were on track for their worst drop since last fall, investors are not buoyed by those assurances.

According to a memo obtained by several media outlets, Altman told staff OpenAI believes “that AI should not be used for mass surveillance or autonomous lethal weapons, and that humans should remain in the loop for high-stakes automated decisions. These are our main red lines.”

Anthropic, the company behind the AI chatbot Claude, was one of several firms that received a $200 million contract from the Department of Defense for “agentic workflows.”

Since then, tensions between Anthropic and the Pentagon have reportedly risen as the startup insists on surveillance restrictions. The government’s attack on Venezuela last month that led to the capture of President Nicolás Maduro reportedly involved the use of Anthropic’s Claude AI models for planning, which caused the startup to push back on the alleged violation of its terms of use.

Anthropic has until 5:01 p.m. ET on Friday to reach a deal with the Pentagon, which has threatened consequences against the company if it doesn’t allow the government unrestricted use.

Altman’s comments come as the Financial Times reports that executives at Amazon, Google, and Microsoft are being pushed by workers to support Anthropic in its dispute with the Pentagon and adopt similar guardrails as the Claude company in any work they undertake with the US military.

Evercore ISI: “Mgmt is explicitly redesigning Block as an ‘AI-native’ organization — embedding automation and efficiency tools across product development, underwriting, operations, and customer interfaces. The financial implications are significant: FY26 Adjusted Operating Income guidance of $3.2B (26% margin) sits materially above mgmt’s prior expectations at the Investor Day just a few months ago, signaling confidence that AI-driven efficiencies can expand margins structurally while sustaining or potentially accelerating product velocity.”

Morgan Stanley: “Cutting 40% of employees (to ~6,000 from ~10,000) encapsulates XYZ’s undertaking that it is now prepared to replace human labor with compute power. We certainly view it as an audacious move by the management, but one that is not without preparation... The reduced headcount should now drive a marked improvement in the gross profit/employee metric, which we expect will justify expanded valuation premium.”

Piper Sandler: “Dorsey characterized the move as a proactive step to make way for AI related productivity gains. The cost saves from lower headcount drive a $500M increase in Block’s Adjusted EBIT guidance for 2026 — now $3.2B vs. $2.7B at investor day just 3 months ago. Bottom line, while the right sizing from XYZ is being well received by investors and should boost short-term profitability, it seems like an extreme step, and we remain skeptical of XYZ’s longer term growth profile.”

Citi: “Several times during the Q&A, the sell side probed management’s comfort with carrying out the major headcount reduction in parallel with more extensive and more effective GenAI use over a roughly two quarter timespan. On the one hand, Block seemed confident in the organization’s ability to adapt and rise to the challenge, but on the other hand, we are aware that a 40% reduction in heads should generate many empty seats. While we believe it more likely for XYZ to succeed here, we think that more reassurance can surface should XYZ continue to do as they plan.”

RBC Capital: “The main question from investors thus far — is this just legacy bloat or real AI enhancements — only time will tell, but it feels like a combination of both... While AI efficiencies no doubt played a key role in a reduction in force of this magnitude, we also believe XYZ was moving in a direction to materially shrink the organization.”

You don’t have to be much of a market sleuth to see that Wall Street never liked the idea of Netflix scooping up the assemblage of media and movie properties for a whooping $83 billion price tag.

The stock slumped both on the day Netflix submitted a bid and the day it entered into an acquisition agreement with Warner Bros.

Now, on the back of Netflix declining to raise its bid and dropping out of the race to acquire Warner Bros., the streaming platform’s shares are having their best day since the market’s bounce back from the April tariff tantrum.

Driving the gains are what HSBC analysts call its “graceful exit” from the WBD brouhaha:

“A positive turn of events in our view, as we believe NFLX’s withdrawal from the race will leave it free to refocus on its business, while its closest competitors grapple with long and distracting regulatory approval and merger integration processes, and with Paramount Skydance saddled with sizable deal debts. And one must not forget the $2.8 bllion breakup fee (around 20% of NFLX 2026 estimated EPS) that NFLX will now be owed from WBD for choosing to go with another suitor.”

In a separate press release, OpenAI detailed the startup’s new multiyear partnership with Amazon, in which the tech giant will initially invest $15 billion then $35 billion in the coming months when “certain conditions are met,” reportedly when OpenAI goes public or achieves building “artificial general intelligence.” Beyond serving as the exclusive third-party cloud distribution provider for OpenAI Frontier, AWS is also expanding its existing $38 billion agreement with the ChatGPT maker to $100 billion over eight years, with OpenAI committing to consume ~2 gigawatts of AWS’s Trainium capacity.

Bernstein Research: “Management highlighted record AI server orders of $34.1B and $9.5B of AI server shipments, exiting the quarter with a record $43B AI backlog. Importantly, Dell characterized enterprise as the fastest growing portion of AI portfolio and pipeline, with enterprise AI up both in absolute dollars and as a mix for both shipments and orders, supported by a growing customer base of 4,000+ AI customers and expanding use cases beyond early pilots.”

Mizuho: “Key points: 1) Fiscal 2027 AI server revenues guided up 100% y/y to ~$50B (WELL ABOVE consensus ~$36B), 2) Memory cost impact limited with AI Server operating margin reiterated at mid-single-digit percentage better than feared, with margins stabilizing post-Jan price increases.”

Citi: “An exceptional beat+raise. 4Q revenues upsided expectations (+39% year-over-year) exceeding the top end of their guide while EPS was also higher (+45% year-over-year) on higher margins. Guide also significantly upsided expectations fiscal 2027 estimated revenue up ~25%+, AI revenues to double (core server/storage MSD, CSG 1%) and EPS up 26%, with gross margins ex-AI showing improvement.”

Barclays: “Infrastructure Solutions Group (ISG) growth was significant — up 73% year-over-year reaching a record $19.6B revenue in the Q, marking eight consecutive quarters of double digit growth. Management expects the strong growth momentum to continue and guided to a doubling of ISG revenues in Q1. AI servers growth accelerated tremendously with $34B of AI server orders in Q4 (up from $12B the prior Q), leading to a total of $64B orders for the fiscal year, which represents a 6x increase year-over-year.”

Morgan Stanley: “Our fiscal 2027 EPS estimate of $10.97 remains well below management’s $12.90. Why? Because we struggle to conceptually understand how — excluding AI servers — DELL can significantly increase prices multiple times through the year, drive over 200 basis points of year-over-year gross margin expansion, and see limited demand elasticity. That’s what the guidance implies.”

A Meta deal with Google, which has been rumored since November, would position the search giant more directly as a competitor to Nvidia in its core business of AI processors. Some analysts have said selling its custom chips to outside customers could become a business worth hundreds of billions of dollars for Google.

What’s causing the delay? Slow permitting, constrained supply chains, and growing public engagement with how deals are approved at the local level. Labor constraints also were cited in the report; a tight supply of skilled workers will increase costs.