Soft lows, semi highs
Soft lows, semi highs
Software stocks fall as ebbing geopolitical risks prompt renewed focus on long-term disruption
THE PARENT GAP
THE PARENT GAP
More babies are now born to parents over 40 than under 20 in the US
AI Factory Factor
AI Factory Factor
Eli Lilly makes the world’s bestselling drug. Can it keep the party going?
Report: SpaceX posted $18.5 billion in revenue and a $5 billion loss last year
Intel shares are officially a thing
Report: Amazon hopes its Project Houdini modular data center plan is the trick to speed up construction
YouTube reminds everyone it’s a streamer, raises Premium subscription prices
Palantir’s slide continues, but President Trump tries to help
Creator of popular, mysterious “HappyHorse” text-to-video model is Alibaba
Latest News
- Trump-backed World Liberty says "we are nowhere near liquidation" as token slips to all-time low
- Anthropic’s making AI boom again — and picking the winners
- TD Cowen initiates coverage of flailing Nakamoto with “buy” rating while cutting Strategy’s price target
- China’s first-quarter EV exports surged 124% from last year
Deep Dives
- The power play behind Hyperion, Mark Zuckerberg’s colossal data center being built in rural Louisiana
- Clean energy investment hit a new record last quarter, mostly driven by EVs
- The cruise industry is booming thanks to younger consumers looking to “seacation”
- Reading an article online? It’s now a coin flip whether it was authored by a human or AI
Latest Stories
Report: SpaceX posted $18.5 billion in revenue and a $5 billion loss last year
All eyes on are SpaceX as it prepares for a blockbuster IPO as soon as this summer, and everyone is eager to get a look at the company’s official numbers for the first time.
The Information is reporting that last year, SpaceX posted $18.5 billion in revenue with a $5 billion loss.
According to the report, the numbers reflect the combined finances of SpaceX and xAI, which it acquired in February.
After acquiring xAI, SpaceX’s successful space launch and satellite business may have been dragged down by xAI’s massive data center spending. Earlier this year, Bloomberg reported that xAI had burned through $8 billion in the first nine months of 2025.
According to the report, the numbers reflect the combined finances of SpaceX and xAI, which it acquired in February.
After acquiring xAI, SpaceX’s successful space launch and satellite business may have been dragged down by xAI’s massive data center spending. Earlier this year, Bloomberg reported that xAI had burned through $8 billion in the first nine months of 2025.
Will investing in kids games finally make Netflix Games “the Netflix of games”?
Netflix is launching a game for preschoolers, its latest foray into stuff-you-play instead of stuff-you-watch.
Intel shares are officially a thing
April most definitely has not been the cruelest month for US chip giant Intel or its shareholders.
The stock is on a remarkable run that’s made it the best performer in the S&P 500 for the month, posting a gain of nearly 43% shortly after 11 a.m. ET Friday. That’s outdone AI darlings like Sandisk, Lumentum, Ciena Corp., Coherent, and Seagate Technology Holdings.
In fact, the monthly view actually underplays the extent of the stock’s performance. Over the eight sessions that ended yesterday — which includes March 31 — the stock was up just shy of 50%. That’s by far its best eight-day streak over the last 30 years.
Investors have eaten up Intel’s announcements this week of partnerships, first with Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s Terafab project, and separately, with Alphabet on developing custom chips for Google Cloud’s AI infrastructure needs.
More broadly, the seemingly relentless demand for computing capacity and chips related to AI seems to present, at least, the prospect of Intel actually solving the long-standing problems at its contract chipmaking business — known as a foundry — that have weighed on the business for years.
Oh, being partially nationalized by the US government amid an increasing global focus on ensuring secure supply chains for crucial technologies like semiconductors probably doesn’t hurt either.
(In case you're keeping track, the US bought a nearly 10% stake in Intel for about $8.9 billion in late August of last year. Today, that stake is worth about $27 billion.)
Report: Amazon hopes its Project Houdini modular data center plan is the trick to speed up construction
Amazon is looking for a magic trick that can help it get past data center construction bottlenecks so it can work through the $244 billion worth of cloud computing backlogs it wants to deliver.
It may have just pulled a rabbit out of its hat. (I know, groan.)
Business Insider is reporting that Amazon’s Project Houdini seeks to slash labor costs and installation time by building modular “data halls” — the rows of racks of servers that make up the heart of data centers — in factories, and then shipping them fully assembled on trailers to data center sites.
According to the report, the modular plan would save weeks of construction time and tens of thousands of hours of labor costs.
This week in Amazon’s letter to shareholders, CEO Andy Jassy wrote that the company is planning $200 billion in capital expenditure this year, and that it is embracing its tradition of taking big bets on experiments like Project Houdini:
“You need to invent and experiment like crazy. Many of these experiments will fail, and it might feel like you’re getting nowhere. But, your culture must possess the tenacity to keep at it.”
Business Insider is reporting that Amazon’s Project Houdini seeks to slash labor costs and installation time by building modular “data halls” — the rows of racks of servers that make up the heart of data centers — in factories, and then shipping them fully assembled on trailers to data center sites.
According to the report, the modular plan would save weeks of construction time and tens of thousands of hours of labor costs.
This week in Amazon’s letter to shareholders, CEO Andy Jassy wrote that the company is planning $200 billion in capital expenditure this year, and that it is embracing its tradition of taking big bets on experiments like Project Houdini:
“You need to invent and experiment like crazy. Many of these experiments will fail, and it might feel like you’re getting nowhere. But, your culture must possess the tenacity to keep at it.”
YouTube reminds everyone it’s a streamer, raises Premium subscription prices
YouTube announced on Friday that it’s raising the cost of its Premium plan by $2 a month to $15.99. The changes will take effect on June billing statements, the company said.
YouTube — which last hiked Premium subscription prices in 2023 — has some cover in boosting prices. Netflix announced a price hike last month, as did Amazon Prime Video. Spotify increased its subscription pricing earlier this year.
The move reflects a level of subscriber security from YouTube, which last year said its paid Premium and Music plans had 125 million subscribers (far fewer than Netflix’s 325 million subscribers). The platform continues to dominate overall streaming market share, accounting for 12.5% of TV viewing time in January, per Nielsen. YouTube has consistently stood atop Nielsen’s monthly viewership charts since February 2025.
Palantir’s slide continues, but President Trump tries to help
Investors were selling Palantir shares again on Friday, with the stock falling as much as 6% before stabilizing, thanks to an assist from the White House.
At its worst moments, the sell-off put the retail favorite on track for its worst weekly loss (more than 16%) since February 2021.
But Palantir has powerful friends: President Trump posted on Truth Social celebrating the company’s “great war fighting capabilities,” sending the stock higher, though it remained in the red.
The overall negative sentiment seems to stem from Anthropic’s powerful new AI models, at least judging from the latest epistle from Palantir bull Dan Ives at Wedbush Securities:
“Anthropic released a new product around multi-agent orchestration, which continues to add more headwinds to the software sector. While Anthropic is hitting a new scale with the company now at $30 billion [annual run rate], up from $9 billion at the start of the year, we believe this is not at the expense of PLTR’s business as the company continues to accelerate both its US commercial and government businesses.”
Of course, the specter of AI undermining of other software companies has been a well-established theme for months. And it’s clearly at play in the market on Friday, with Palo Alto Networks, ServiceNow, CrowdStrike, Zscaler, Figma, and Atlassian continuing to get clocked on negative AI implications.
But the recent inclusion of Palantir among the pack of potentially replaceable software providers is newer, with the view popularized by well-followed market commentator Michael Burry’s pronouncement — since deleted — that Anthropic is “eating Palantir’s lunch,” which seemed to contribute to the downdraft for Palantir today.
Michael Burry's now-deleted X post sends $PLTR lower. 📉
— Yahoo Finance (@YahooFinance) April 9, 2026
"Anthropic is eating Palantir's lunch," the famed investor shared. pic.twitter.com/IpGoabKIXC
The stock dove through its 50-day moving average in recent days, underscoring the sputtering momentum for what has been one of the market’s biggest winners over the last couple years. Long-term holders are still up massively, with the stock up about 1,400% over the last three years.
Creator of popular, mysterious “HappyHorse” text-to-video model is Alibaba
AI benchmark leaderboards are often where mysterious new models make their debut, stoking speculation about the unnamed companies behind them.
That was the case with an impressive new text-to-video model named HappyHorse-1.0 that shot to the top of public leaderboards. CNBC reports that Chinese tech giant Alibaba has confirmed that it is the owner of the new model.
HappyHorse beat out the popular Seedance model from rival ByteDance in blind human evaluations to claim the top spot on the Artificial Analysis text-to-video leaderboard.
While OpenAI has announced it is shuttering its text-to-video Sora app, the category continues to see intense competition as a flurry of video models improve with more realistic physics and cinematic effects.
HappyHorse beat out the popular Seedance model from rival ByteDance in blind human evaluations to claim the top spot on the Artificial Analysis text-to-video leaderboard.
While OpenAI has announced it is shuttering its text-to-video Sora app, the category continues to see intense competition as a flurry of video models improve with more realistic physics and cinematic effects.
China exported more than twice as many electric vehicles (and plug-in hybrids) in the first quarter of 2026 as it did in the same period last year, according to the China Passenger Car Association (CPCA).
New energy vehicle exports surged 124% year over year, as major players like BYD and Chery ramped up overseas efforts to combat lower domestic sales. Tesla’s China business also boosted exports, shipping 164% more EVs than the same period the year before.
Nio is ramping up export efforts as well, with a goal to deliver “several thousand” EVs overseas this year and have a presence in 40 countries. Still, the automaker exported 271 vehicles in Q1 — less than half of a percent of the company’s total deliveries.
According to the CPCA, April will see the country’s automotive industry continue its “slow recovery.”
Tech dramas, rather than the Iran war, will be the earnings season focus
Energy earnings will offset slowdowns elsewhere. But it’s still all about Big Tech.
CoreWeave strikes deal with Anthropic to rent data center capacity to power Claude
CoreWeave struck a multiyear deal with Anthropic to rent data center capacity to build and deploy its Claude AI models, the company announced Friday.
The company did not specify how much the deal is worth. The stock, which has swelled more than 20% in the past month as of yesterday’s close amid a string of positive news, is up another 4.5% in premarket trading as of 8:45 a.m. ET.
CoreWeave announced on Thursday that it has expanded its deal to provide AI compute to Meta. The company, which initially booked a $14.2 billion deal with Meta in September, will now provide an additional $21 billion worth of services to the hyperscaler. Separately, CoreWeave announced two bond offerings on Thursday as well.
CoreWeave also recently disclosed that it would borrow $8.5 billion backed by its chips and Meta’s AI compute purchases. The unique financing arrangement helped secure a lower interest rate.
Optics stocks rise after Lumentum CEO says demand is strong with “no end in sight”
Lumentum rose more than 5% in premarket trading on Friday, and lifted its competitors with it, after the company’s CEO told Bloomberg that demand for its optical components is through the roof.
Chief Executive Officer Michael Hurlston told the outlet Friday that the company is “falling further and further behind the demand” and would be sold out through all of 2028 within two quarters.
“The capex numbers from the US hyperscalers are enormous and there seems to be no end in sight,” he said.
The comments also bolstered Lumentum’s peers, with Applied Optoelectronics and Coherent also in the green in early trades this morning.
These companies make optical components that use light, rather than traditional copper interconnects, to move data within and between servers in data centers, a technology increasingly seen as critical for scaling artificial intelligence capacity.
Earlier this month, Nvidia said that it would invest $2 billion apiece in Coherent and Lumentum to develop their advanced optics technologies.
“The capex numbers from the US hyperscalers are enormous and there seems to be no end in sight,” he said.
The comments also bolstered Lumentum’s peers, with Applied Optoelectronics and Coherent also in the green in early trades this morning.
These companies make optical components that use light, rather than traditional copper interconnects, to move data within and between servers in data centers, a technology increasingly seen as critical for scaling artificial intelligence capacity.
Earlier this month, Nvidia said that it would invest $2 billion apiece in Coherent and Lumentum to develop their advanced optics technologies.
TSMC rises on 35% sales jump in Q1 as AI demand holds strong
TSMC is up more than 2% in premarket trading after the world’s largest chipmaker reported a 35% jump in first-quarter revenue, beating Wall Street expectations on continued strong demand for AI chips.
Revenue from January through March rose 35% year over year to NT$1.13 trillion ($35.6 billion), marginally topping consensus estimates of NT$1.12 trillion. March revenue alone surged 45% from a year earlier.
The strong top-line figures suggest that demand for TSMC’s chips — used in everything from smartphones to massive data centers — remain robust, with strong order momentum from major customers including Apple, Nvidia, AMD, and Broadcom, even as concerns rise that the Middle East war could dent global AI infrastructure spending.
Price hikes for its advanced chips may have also contributed to the sales beat.
The company is set to report first-quarter earnings on April 16, alongside updated guidance for the current quarter and full year.
Shares have gained roughly 30% year to date.
Wall Street CEOs reportedly “summoned” to DC by Scott Bessent and Jay Powell to discuss AI cyber risks after Anthropic’s warning
Top officials are worried about left-tail cybersecurity risks from new AI tools, and are making sure the most important American bankers are taking the threat seriously.
