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Hyunsoo Rim

Alibaba surges on AI spending hike, new model launch, and Nvidia partnership

Alibaba jumped over 9% in early trading on Wednesday after the company announced greater investment in AI, a partnership with Nvidia, and a new model.

At Alibaba’s annual flagship technology conference, CEO Eddie Wu said the company plans to expand its AI investment over the next three years beyond the $53 billion announced in February, though a specific uplift wasn’t revealed.

The firm also unveiled the latest version of its “largest and most capable” AI model series, the Qwen3-Max — as other Chinese tech giants like Baidu, Tencent, and ByteDance are doubling down on homegrown solutions to compete with OpenAI and Anthropic amid a wider Chinese push to reduce dependence on Western AI hardware and models.

According to Reuters, Alibaba said that its new model “outperformed rival products including Anthropic’s Claude and DeepSeek-V3.1 in certain metrics,” citing third-party benchmarks like Tau2-Bench.

Adding to the hype was Alibaba’s new partnership with Nvidia: the company said it will integrate the chip giant’s AI development tools into Alibaba Cloud to support “physical AI,” which includes real-word products like robots and driverless cars — just a day after Nvidia announced a $100 billion deal with OpenAI.

Alibaba also announced plans to open its first data centers in Brazil, France, and the Netherlands, while adding new sites in Mexico, Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, and Dubai in 2026. Last month, the company struck a deal with Unicom — China’s second-largest mobile service provider — to deploy its in-house AI accelerators.

With this morning’s rise, Alibaba’s shares are at their highest level since 2021, up over 110% year to date.

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J. Edward Moreno

Canopy rallies after CEO stock purchase

Canopy Growth rallied on Wednesday after its CEO, Luc Mongeau, disclosed an unplanned stock purchase on Tuesday.

Mongeau, who joined Canopy from Mars in January, bought 27,469 shares at CA$1.84. The buy is worth about US$36,259.

It has been a tumultuous time for cannabis stocks, as the market in Canada (where Canopy is located) stagnates and cannabis reform in the US has yet to move forward.

markets
Matt Phillips

Robinhood, new S&P 500 leader, the subject of favorable analyst chatter

Robinhood Markets briefly touched a new all-time intraday high in early trading after the newly minted — and now top-performing — member of the the S&P 500 received some favorable write-ups from Wall Street analysts.

(Robinhood Markets Inc. is the parent company of Sherwood Media, an independently operated media company subject to certain legal and regulatory restrictions. I own stock as part of my compensation.)

Piper Sandler analysts highlighted momentum in the company’s prediction markets business thanks to the rollout of contracts on college and profession football, noting that the event contracts business was running at a $200 million annualized rate so far in September. They raised their price target on the shares to $140 from $120.

“Prediction Markets (aka event contracts) present significant upside opportunity for Robinhood,” Piper Sandler’s Patrick Moley wrote.

Elsewhere, Citi analysts raised their Q3 and full-year 2025 estimates and upped their price target on the shares to $135, but kept a “neutral” rating on the stock.

“While HOOD continues to see solid momentum across the platform, we believe the stock is pricing in much of the growth potential in our view. Given current valuations and where we are in the retail cycle (closer to the highs than the lows from an activity perspective from our viewpoint), we prefer to wait for a more reasonable entry point at present.”

The stock has clearly had a heck of a run.

Through yesterday’s close, Robinhood was up nearly 240% in 2025. Since it was added to the S&P 500 on Monday, it’s now the top performer among the blue chips, trouncing previous leaders Seagate Technology Holdings and Palantir.

markets
J. Edward Moreno

UniQure surges after encouraging trial results for Huntington’s treatment

UniQure rose more than 150% in early trading Wednesday after it released trial results that showed its experimental gene therapy for Huntington’s disease slowed its progression by 75% after three years.

The treatment, AMT-130, is a one-time treatment for Huntington’s, a genetic brain disease that degrades cognitive function and muscle control. There is currently no cure for the disease.

UniQure said it plans to submit the treatment for approval to the Food and Drug Administration in the first quarter of 2026, meaning it could become available to patients later that year. The company currently makes nearly all of its revenue from gene therapies that treat hemophilia.

Halo of the sun

A tiny UK company is showing how easy it is to get an (undeserved?) Nvidia halo effect

Step 1: join a free Nvidia program. Step 2: watch stock go up. Step 3: watch stock go down.

Luke Kawa3h
markets
Luke Kawa

One of Opendoor’s top shareholders, Access Industries, sold nearly $100 million in stock on Tuesday

Access Industries is rushing for the exits in Opendoor Technologies.

The investment firm run by Len Blavatnik, one of Opendoor’s earliest and biggest shareholders, sold 13.66 million shares of the online real estate company on Tuesday, per a filing, generating roughly $97 million.

With this divestment, it’s dumped nearly $300 million worth of Opendoor stock, or almost 36 million shares, this month through its AI LiquidRE arm. Access Industries had prior sales on Monday and September 12.

Shares of Opendoor are down more than 30% over the past week, but are up big in premarket trading on Wednesday.

Pueo Keffer, one of the Opendoor directors who recently stepped down amid the company’s leadership changes, is a senior managing director at Access Industries. However, he tweeted that he’s still adding to his personal holdings of the stock.

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