Markets
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Luke Kawa

Alibaba gains as Q2 cloud revenues beat estimates on “robust AI demand”

China’s leading cloud giant is cashing in on the huge appetite for AI compute.

Alibaba ADRs are up big in premarket trading after the e-commerce and cloud giant reported second-quarter sales above analysts’ estimates.

Revenues in its Cloud Intelligence Group rose to 39.8 billion yuan (~$5.6 billion) for the three months ended September 30, ahead of estimates for roughly 38 billion yuan (~$5.35 billion).

“We have entered into an investment phase to build long-term strategic value in AI technologies and infrastructure and a consumption platform integrating daily life services and e-commerce,” said CEO Eddie Wu. “Robust AI demand further accelerated our Cloud Intelligence Group business, with revenue up 34% and AI-related product revenue achieving triple-digit year-over-year growth for the ninth consecutive quarter.”

For traders, the potential benefits from establishing a dominant cloud position in the region are outweighing Alibaba’s bottom-line figures. The positive reaction to these quarterly results comes despite adjusted net income falling 72% compared to the same quarter last year.

Management made it clear that profits are not the top near-term priority.

“We are re-investing our profits and free cash flow for the future while near-term profitability is expected to fluctuate,” Chief Financial Officer Toby Xu added in the press release. “Over the past four quarters, we have deployed approximately RMB120 billion in capital expenditure toward AI and cloud infrastructure.”

This continues the trend of Alibaba’s commitment to AI capex being received enthusiastically by the market. Ahead of earnings, the company announced that its Qwen AI app was downloaded more than 10 million times in the week following its relaunch.

Elsewhere, its domestic e-commerce business — still far and away the firm’s biggest revenue driver — beat sales estimates, while international digital commerce came up short.

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Tasha Matsumoto
4/10/26
Stocks dip ahead of tomorrow’s scheduled talks between the US and Iran

While the S&P 500 fell on the day, the benchmark index posted a winning week amid ceasefire optimism.

Brown bear on a rock
markets
Matt Phillips

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.)

Luke Kawa
4/10/26
Anthropic’s making AI boom again — and picking the winners

More compute = more revenues, and going custom has its own particular consequences for different AI stocks.

4th of July Fireworks in Long Beach
markets
Matt Phillips

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.

Truth post on PLTR
(Truth Social)

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.

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.

124% 🚗
Max Knoblauch

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.”

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