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Luke Kawa

AI darling Vertiv is getting crushed as Amazon launches cooling system for data center servers

It’s been the kiss of death for many companies, if not industries, when Amazon decides it wants to enter the space.

Vertiv Holdings is feeling that sting, with shares down about 8% midday Thursday after the e-commerce and cloud behemoth announced late on Wednesday that it’s developed its own cooling system called the In-Row Heat Exchanger (IRHX). These will be used to cool down racks on racks of Nvidia GPUs in data centers.

Per Dave Brown, vice president of compute and machine learning services at Amazon Web Services, the company considered building liquid-cooled data centers from scratch but it would have taken too long, and the time frame wouldn’t be compatible with the access to Blackwell chips. Using cooling systems currently on offer “didn’t scale,” he added, because they took up too much floor space. So Amazon made its own.

IRHX is irking Vertiv shareholders, as “thermal management solutions” is a part of its data center infrastructure business. They’re losing a customer and gaining a competitor!

“Amazon Web Services rolling out its own server liquid-cooling system could weigh on Vertiv’s future growth prospects,” Bloomberg Intelligence senior analyst Mustafa Okur wrote. “Around 10% of overall sales come from liquid cooling, we calculate, and AWS may be one of the largest customers.”

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Ross Stores surges as Q1 results beat expectations, full-year guidance raised

Ross shares are rising after the company delivered strong Q1 results, with sales topping Wall Street’s projections.

The stock soared 6.3% just after the open.

Key numbers:

  • Earnings per share of $2.02 vs. $1.47 year over year (estimate: $1.72).

  • Sales of $6.01 billion, up 21% year over year (estimate: $5.61 billion).

  • Comparable sales growth of 17% (estimate: 8.58%).

CEO Jim Conroy attributed the results to better traffic in stores. “Customer traffic was the primary driver of the strong sales trend as compelling merchandise assortments, higher customer acquisition and engagement from our ongoing marketing initiatives, and an improved in‑store experience are resonating with shoppers.”

The company also noted that transaction volume grew across all key demographics, including “income levels, ethnicities, and age groups, including younger customers.” Sales were also likely buoyed by standard seasonal tailwinds, including consumer spending from tax refunds.

Backed by the strong quarter, the company lifted its full-year targets. Ross now projects same-store sales growth of 6% to 7%, up from the prior forecast of 3% to 4%, topping Wall Street’s estimate of 4.64%. It boosted its annual EPS guidance to a range of $7.50 to $7.74, versus the prior outlook of $7.02 to $7.36.

Ross Stores has been one of the retail sector’s standout performers this year, rising around 20% year to date as of Thursday’s close.

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Imax surges on report it’s approached entertainment companies for a sale

Imax is on pace for its best trading day since 2021 following a Wall Street Journal report that it’s exploring a sale. Shares are up more than 15% in premarket trading on Friday.

The premium screen company has reportedly approached entertainment companies for a deal, though talks are early and may not come to fruition. Imax has been boosted in recent years by its higher ticket prices — a K-shaped trend in movie theaters — and last year accounted for more than 5% of domestic box office sales.

Theatrical release windows have become a large debate in Hollywood this year, amid the bidding war between Paramount and Netflix for Warner Bros. Discovery. It’s unclear if an entertainment buyer would favor its own films for Imax over a rival’s.

In the first quarter, Imax booked $81.4 million in sales, beating Wall Street expectations but down about 6.5% from last year, when China’s “Ne Zha 2” smashed records.

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AMD rises as CEO forecasts massive 5-year CPU demand growth

AMD’s shares are rising in premarket trading after CEO Lisa Su delivered an optimistic demand forecast, predicting that the global market for CPUs will grow by more than 35% annually over the next five years, according to Nikkei Asia.

About six months ago or 12 months ago, nobody was talking about CPU shortages,” Su said at an event in Taipei. But as [AI] inferencing and agentic AI have really started to ramp up, the CPU market [will] continue to grow very much. Over the next five years, we see the CPU market growing at over 35% each year, and this is an area where were seeing very strong demand.

The comments come as the computing demands of AI agents (in particular, the so-called orchestration of tasks) increase the need for CPUs in running models.

AMD also said this week it plans to invest more than $10 billion into Taiwan’s AI ecosystem alongside supply chain partners as it ramps production capacity for next-generation AI infrastructure. This investment will support the manufacturing ramp of AMDs sixth-generation EPYC CPUs, code-named Venice.

Su added that CPU supply is now “tight” as inference demand accelerates, while bottlenecks are emerging across memory, power availability, and advanced packaging.

AMD shares have climbed sharply this year amid broader enthusiasm around AI infrastructure spending. The stock has risen more than 100% year to date. During AMDs last earnings call, management told investors it now sees the server CPU total addressable market reaching $120 billion or more by 2030, according to Yahoo Finance.

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