Akamai is up 26% in premarket trading Friday after the company announced a major cloud infrastructure deal tied to AI, helping investors look past modestly better-than-expected Q1 results and a weaker-than-expected Q2 outlook.

In a press release Thursday after the bell, the cloud and cybersecurity company said it had secured a $1.8 billion, seven-year commitment from a “leading frontier model provider” for Akamai’s cloud infrastructure services, a deal CEO Tom Leighton said strengthened the company’s position as a “key infrastructure provider in the AI economy.”

The announcement came alongside Akamai’s Q1 earnings, which were only modestly ahead of Wall Street expectations. Adjusted earnings came in at $1.61 per share, slightly above analysts’ estimate of $1.60 per share compiled by FactSet. Revenue rose 6% year on year to $1.074 billion, broadly in-line with Wall Street's forecasts.

The company said growth was led by its cloud infrastructure services, where revenue jumped 40% year on year. Security revenue grew 11%, while delivery and other cloud applications revenue dropped 7%.

For the current quarter, the company forecast adjusted earnings per share of $1.45 to $1.65, with the midpoint falling short of the $1.68 expected, and revenue of $1.075 billion to $1.1 billion also below the $1.104 billion estimate at the midpoint, according to FactSet.

Another day, another massive Nvidia warrants deal in the AI ecosystem.

Shares of data center company IREN spiked 20% in postmarket trading after it reached a pact with the chip designer to deploy up to 5 gigawatts of its AI offerings across data centers.

This means that IREN will effectively be building out data centers designed by Nvidia to optimize for its hardware. And some of that hardware deployed will seemingly then be utilized by Nvidia: IREN also announced a $3.4 billion AI cloud contract with the giant on Thursday.

As part of the arrangement, IREN issued Nvidia warrants that expire in five years that enable the company to buy up to 30 million shares at $70 apiece. If fully exercised, that would amount to a $2.1 billion investment into IREN.

This announcement took the sting out of IREN’s Q3 results, which saw the firm report sales of $144.8 million (compared to analyst estimates of $216.6 million) and adjusted EBITDA of $59.5 million (estimate: $125 million).

On Wednesday, Nvidia announced an investment of $500 million in fiber-optics firm Corning to accelerate its manufacturing capacity.

Shares of Coinbase, the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the US, slid in after-hours trading after it missed analysts’ expectations for Q1 earnings.

The company reported:

• Total revenue of $1.4 billion, below the nearly $1.5 billion analysts polled by FactSet were expecting.

• Transaction revenue of $755.8 million, well below the consensus estimate of $808.1 million and a 40% decline from nearly $1.3 billion in last year’s period.

• A surprise loss of $394 million, a $1.47 loss per share for the quarter, compared to net income of $65.6 million in last year’s period.

The firm has 12 products generating over $100 million on an annualized basis, with prediction markets being one of its “fastest growing products ever, on track on become the 13th product,” according to Coinbase’s presentation.

The earnings report comes in the same week CEO Brian Armstrong announced the firm is cutting 14% of its workforce, or about 700 employees, citing artificial intelligence and the need to adjust its cost structure amid a down market.

Applied Optoelectronics tumbled after-hours after the connectivity company reported lower-than-expected Q1 sales and underwhelming revenue guidance.

Here are the numbers:

• Revenue of $151.1 million (compared to analyst estimates of $157.5 million).

• An adjusted loss per share of $0.07 (estimate: a $0.05 loss).

• An adjusted gross margin of 29.1% (estimate: 30.37%).

The company helps servers in large-scale data centers relay information, partnering with companies like Microsoft and Amazon. Last month, the stock surged after news broke that a key hyperscale customer, following an initial order, had significantly increased its demand for AAOI’s offerings.

For second quarter of 2026, the company expects:

• Revenue in the range of $180 million to $198 million (estimate: $196.83 million).

• Adjusted gross margin in the range of 29% to 30% (estimate: 31.42%).

In the press release, AAOI Chief Financial and Strategy Officer Dr. Stefan Murry said:

“Our focus remains on ramping our capacity thoughtfully to meet the unprecedented demand and are confident in our ability to execute on our ambitious growth plans, while ensuring reliability, quality, and a dedication to excellence.”

Demand for photonics does not seem to be in question, but judging by Lumentum’s post-earnings call on Tuesday and Applied Optoelectronics’ commentary, the challenge lies in securing supply.

AAOI was up nearly 300% since the beginning of the year before this print.

Shares of Airbnb whipsawed in after-hours trading Thursday after the company beat Wall Street estimates on revenue and raised guidance for the year, but missed on earnings per share, citing “macroeconomic and geopolitical uncertainty.”

Airbnb reported: 

• Q1 revenue of $2.7 billion (compared to analyst estimates of $2.6 billion).

• Adjusted EBITDA of $519 million (estimate: $483.2 million).

• Adjusted diluted EPS of $0.26 (estimate: $0.29).

• Q2 revenue sales guidance of $3.54 billion to $3.60 billion, representing year-over-year growth of 14% to 16% (estimate: $3.4 billion).

Investors were watching for initial impacts of the Iran war, gas prices, jet fuel costs, and cost-of-living increases on the company’s finances and projections.

Despite the difficult terrain, the company said that it’s confident going forward. For 2026, Airbnb raised its guidance, stating that it expects year-over-year revenue growth to accelerate to low to mid-teens and an adjusted EBITDA margin of at least 35%.

“The upward revision to our revenue outlook reflects meaningful progress across our growth initiatives and improvements to monetization through a simplified fee structure and our insurance programs, which are expected to lift our full-year take rate. We remain optimistic about our continued momentum, even as we face tougher comparisons in the back half of this year against the rollout of Reserve Now, Pay Later in 2025 and current headwinds from the Middle East conflict.”

Perhaps Wall Street is less certain about customers’ willingness to splurge on vacations given the state of things. According to the company, in Q1, roughly 20% of global booking value came from Reserve Now, Pay Later bookings.

Sports betting company DraftKings rose in aftermarket trading Thursday after it reported better-than-expected Q1 sales and earnings. Here’s a rough outline of the results:

• Q1 revenue of $1.65 billion vs. Wall Street’s $1.63 billion expectation, according to FactSet.

• Q1 earnings per share of $0.03 vs. the consensus estimate of $0.01.

• Q1 adjusted EBITDA of $167.9 million vs. the $152.6 million expectation.

• Maintained previous full-year adjusted EBITDA guidance of $700 million to $900 million, compared with estimates of $791.4 million.

• Maintained previous full-year sales guidance of between $6.5 billion and $6.9 billion (midpoint $6.70 billion), compared with analysts’ estimates of $6.82 billion, according to FactSet.

Shares of traditional online sports gambling platforms like DraftKings have struggled as prediction markets have emerged as a center of industry excitement.

The shift to such markets has been tricky for both DraftKings and rival FanDuel, the US leader in online sports betting, which have to manage preexisting relationships with state gaming commissions that stand to be disrupted by prediction markets, which are regulated on the federal level by the CFTC.

DraftKings is down roughly 25% in 2026, while FanDuel parent Flutter Entertainment, which reported earnings yesterday, is down more than 50%.

CoreWeave tumbled in postmarket trading after management unveiled soft Q2 guidance that failed to justify the stock’s 86% rally since late March.

In Q1, the neocloud firm reported:

• Revenue of $2.1 billion (compared to analyst estimates of $2 billion).

• Adjusted EBITDA of $1.2 billion (estimate: $1.1 billion).

While its revenue beat was only a little north of 5%, the figure surpassed all of the 32 analyst estimates compiled by Bloomberg.

During the conference call, management offered Q2 sales guidance of $2.45 billion to 2.6 billion, below the expected $2.7 billion. The outlook for adjusted operating income of $30 million to $90 million was also short of the consensus call for $153.9 million.

As of March 31, CoreWeave’s revenue backlog was a whopping $99.4 billion, up from $66.8 billion in the prior quarter.

“We surpassed 1 GW of active power and believe we are well on our way to more than 8 GW by 2030, having positioned our capital structure to scale with the opportunity ahead,” said CEO, cofounder, and Chairman Michael Intrator in a press release. “AI natives and enterprise customers are choosing CoreWeave because we sit between the models and the silicon, delivering the infrastructure, software, and expertise required to build and run AI at scale.”

At the end of the quarter, the company managed to close a unique debt deal backed by GPUs and what Meta is slated to pay for AI compute.

Since then, CoreWeave and its peers have been buoyed by a scramble for compute catalyzed by a seeming shortage for Anthropic, as the Claude developer aims to beef up its footprint amid complaints around usage limits.

CoreWeave reached a multiyear deal with Anthropic to help power Claude, and also expanded its AI compute sales pact with Meta by $21 billion.

Retail favorite Rocket Lab rose late Thursday after reporting better-than-expected Q1 sales and offering upbeat sales guidance for Q2.

Here’s how the company did:

• Q1 revenue of $200.3 million vs. Wall Street’s expectation for $189.7 million, according to FactSet.

• An adjusted loss per share of $0.07 vs. the consensus estimate of a $0.07 loss.

• Adjusted EBITDA of -$11.8 million vs. the analyst forecast of -$26.3 million.

• Q2 sales guidance of between $225 million and $240 million ($232.5 million midpoint) vs. expectations for $205.3 million.

• Q2 guidance for EBITDA between -$20 million and -$26 million (-$23 million midpoint) vs. the -$14.5 million analysts were penciling in.

Rocket Lab shares have surged roughly 2,000% over the last two years, as the company capitalized on investor enthusiasm for space.

Over the last year, Rocket Lab also rode growing excitement about companies that plan to use their ability to place clusters of satellites into low-Earth orbit and then sell data services to earthlings below — essentially the business model of Elon Musk’s Starlink.

Though it’s privately held for now, Musk’s space behemoth, SpaceX, remains the key source of excitement around the sector, enthusiasm that will likely grow as the company moves forward with plans for what’s likely to be the largest public offering ever.

Rabid space enthusiasm aside, Rocket Lab remains a money-losing company that’s burning a lot of cash, though Wall Street analysts think it could break even in 2027.

We’ll see. That projection hangs on the company’s ability to get its larger Neutron rocket into its commercial launch cycle sooner rather than later. And given that Neutron’s maiden launch — originally slated for 2025 — has been delayed to the fourth quarter of 2026, that’s by no means assured.

Separately, Rocket Lab also announced that it’s signed the largest launch services contract in its history with a “confidential customer.”

The multi-launch agreement includes five dedicated Neutron launches and three of the company’s smaller Electron rocket. The launches are expected to occur between 2026 and 2029. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Opendoor Technologies delivered a set of better-than-expected Q1 results while proclaiming that it’s just achieved a key profitability milestone.

In Q1, the online real estate company reported:

• Revenue of $720 million (compared to analyst estimates of $665.2 million).

• Adjusted EBITDA of -$31 million (estimate: -$33.5 million).

In the press release, the company said it is adjusted EBITDA profitable on a 12-month go-forward basis as of April 1.

For Q2, management offered mixed guidance. The company expects sales of about $900 million (estimate: $1.13 billion) with adjusted EBITDA roughly flat (estimate: -$4.66 million).

Under its new leadership, the online real estate company has redoubled its efforts on aggressive home-flipping and adopted a “default to AI approach,” including using the technology for home assessments and in closings.

“Our 4Q25 and January 2026 cash acquisition cohorts have the best combination of margin, margin stability, and resale velocity of any corresponding cohort in company history (excluding the COVID-era cohorts),” CEO Kaz Nejatian said in the press release.

Opendoor’s share price, one of the most interesting things in the stock market for a couple months in 2025, has been decidedly boring in 2026. Since late January, it’s traded in a range of roughly $4.30 to $5.60.

OpenAI’s plan to purchase 10 gigawatts’ worth of custom AI chips from Broadcom, a deal announced in October, is running into some financial difficulties, per The Information.

The report, citing an internal memo and people involved in the talks, says that the custom chip designer is being asked to finance the initial $18 billion in chip production, and is only willing to do so if Microsoft buys 40% of these processors or OpenAI finds other buyers.

Shares of Broadcom sank to session lows following this news, but pared most of that retreat thereafter.

Microsoft recently revised its agreement with the ChatGPT maker to end revenue-sharing payments from the former to the latter. That’s seemingly a signal of the tech behemoth’s reluctance to contribute as much to OpenAI’s massive cash burn going forward.

All in all, it appears as though Broadcom is willing to meet OpenAI more than halfway in a bid to make sure the parties can secure capacity for these chips to be produced. The report concludes:

“Broadcom had long insisted that OpenAI put up one dollar of its own for every dollar Broadcom provided in financing, a typical arrangement to limit the chip vendor’s risks. That requirement had become a sticking point in the talks, according to the memo and an executive involved in the talks.

But Broadcom recently decided to relax that demand and invest more capital up-front than OpenAI, breaking from Broadcom’s ‘long-held hard-line requirement,’ the OpenAI memo said.”

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration announced today that Tesla Model Ys manufactured after November 12 were the first to pass the agency’s new advanced driver assistance system tests, which are now part of the New Car Assessment Program.

“By successfully passing these new tests, the 2026 Tesla Model Y demonstrates the lifesaving potential of driver assistance technologies and sets a high bar for the industry,” NHTSA Administrator Jonathan Morrison wrote in the press release. “We hope to see many more manufacturers develop vehicles that can meet these requirements.”

The new tests include:

• Pedestrian automatic emergency braking

• Lane-keeping assistance

• Blind spot warning

• Blind spot intervention

The milestone offers Tesla highly coveted regulatory validation, as it seeks to spur usage of its Full Self-Driving (Supervised) tech. The NHTSA didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Used car prices ticked down in April, the first drop in 2026, according to fresh data from Cox Automotive.

Cox’s Manheim Used Vehicle Value Index, which tracks wholesale prices, dipped 1.6% in April from March, but remains around highs not seen since 2023 as shoppers react to surging gas prices.

“Affordability remains front and center, and that’s driving some increased demand for older vehicles... as well as changing the calculus for consumers shopping for EVs,” said Cox’s chief economist, Jeremy Robb.

As reported in March, used car retailers including CarMax have told Sherwood News that gas prices are driving more shoppers to look toward EVs. Cox’s EV index is up 7.2% from April 2025, compared to a 1.1% hike for its non-EV index.

Shares of home appliance giant Whirlpool Corp. are tumbling on Thursday following its Q1 earnings and stark warning about consumer confidence.

According to Whirlpool, the war with Iran “resulted in recession-level industry decline in the US as consumer confidence collapsed in late February and March.”

The company’s Q1 sales were down about 10% year over year. In April, Whirlpool issued its “largest price increase in more than a decade,” with costs for consumers rising 10%. US appliance demand dropped 7.4% in Q1, Whirlpool said, including a 10% drop in March.

“This level of industry decline is similar to what we have observed during the global financial crisis and even higher than during other recessionary periods,” CEO Marc Bitzer said on the company’s earnings call.

Whirlpool shares were down more than 20% in premarket trading, but pared some of those losses in early trading. It remains on pace for one of its worst trading days in company history.