Markets
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Luke Kawa

Bank of America: Claiming an AI bubble over OpenAI’s money situation is a “lazy/cherry-picked argument”

Bank of America analyst Vivek Arya is throwing down the gauntlet: there’s one bear case against AI stocks he really doesn’t like.

“The common argument that ‘AI stocks must be overvalued because OpenAI cannot justify $1.4 trillion of long-term commitments’ is a lazy/cherry-picked argument in our view,” he wrote in a note to clients on Monday, in which the analyst reiterated his confidence in his favorite data center and semi stocks.

He added:

“While we agree OpenAI’s plans are very ambitious, none of that spending has yet been put in place and will be gated by practical constraints such as access to power and data center space. The majority of AI spending is being done by profitable, public hyperscalers for whom upgrading infrastructure is mission-critical (upgrade to accelerated from traditional CPU-computing) and defensive (e.g. Google’s $92bn capex ‘defends’ a $200bn+ search leadership by providing Gemini-chatbot driven results to all customers who might otherwise defect to ChatGPT, Perplexity or other search engines.) Meanwhile private AI companies are making rapid strides attracting business customers (1mn+ by OpenAI, 300K+ by Anthropic) which will continue to put pressure on public software and infrastructure-as-a service vendors to raise AI investments.”

On the one hand, yes, I concur: while ChatGPT may have been what brought the AI boom into public consciousness, it’s not the alpha and omega of the movement. The continued push from the publicly traded, immensely profitable tech companies that lead the S&P 500 is probably the more important factor behind the mile-deep, inch-wide AI spending boom in the here and now.

On the other hand, OpenAI’s spending commitments have driven big valuation bumps for Amazon, Broadcom, AMD, and Oracle in just the past two months. In other words, those stocks have priced in that demand being real and realized. To the extent it isn’t, or can’t be, well then some overvaluation worries would be somewhat justified.

Reports that OpenAI is moving toward an IPO, however, would offer some enhanced confidence that it’ll be able to get its hands on the cash necessary to follow through on these pledges.

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Luke Kawa

Opendoor surges on news that it’s being re-added to Russell indexes

Shares of Opendoor Technologies are spiking after the company announced it’s been selected for inclusion in the Russell 3000 Index.

Being added to indexes often brings along with it flows from funds that track those benchmarks.

“Inclusion in the Russell 3000 Index typically means membership in either the large-cap Russell 1000 Index or the small-cap Russell 2000 Index, as well as in relevant growth and value style indexes,” per the press release.

These additions will be effective after June 26.

What a difference a year makes: Opendoor was removed from the Russell 2000 at about this time last year because its share price had failed to hold $1. The flows associated with getting booted from the Russell 2000 was cited as a reason for elevated short interest on the stock, which one Redditor (u/gregw134) argued made Opendoor an attractive buy — months before its parabolic surge.

Since then, the company has picked up a horde of investors (the so-called “$OPEN ARMY”), overhauled its management ranks, and appears to be on the precipice of breaking even.

Eric Jackson, the architect of the explosion in retail attention on Opendoor, shouted out that Redditor’s research in an interview with Sherwood News:

“That was a great post. It was a really thoughtful post. Really, really detailed. I think I buy into probably 90% to 95% of what he’s saying. And I didn’t know about the whole ETF unloading, kicking it out of the Russell 2000, as a potential reason why it dipped down to $0.50 a couple of weeks ago.”

It’s also a strong session for stocks geared to the real estate market in general, with the fever in long-term bond yields seemingly well and truly broken.

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Sage D. Young & Helena Cheng

IREN rallies after securing GPUs to boost run-rate revenues to $4.4 billion

IREN jumped postmarket on Tuesday after management announced that they’d secured supply to make good on their recent deal with Nvidia.

The data company reached a $1.6 billion agreement with Dell for air-cooled Blackwell systems to service its AI cloud contract with the chip designer announced earlier this month.

The stock has pared much of its gains in early trading on Wednesday.

This previously revealed partnership will see IREN build out data centers designed by Nvidia to optimize for its hardware. Some of that compute will then be utilized by Nvidia, which also received warrants to invest up to $2.1 billion in IREN.

Once these systems are up and running in early 2027, IREN said that its annualized run rate would rise to $4.4 billion from $3.7 billion.

“Securing capacity and accelerating commissioning are our top priorities in a market where time-to-compute is everything,” IREN cofounder and CEO Daniel Roberts said in a statement. “Our relationship with Dell ensures access to hardware at the scale and speed the market demands.”

markets
Claire Yubin Oh

Zscaler plummets after revenue guidance falls short of estimates

The market has deeply ingrained software-phobia right now, as traders are highly sensitive to anything software-related giving off any whiff of AI-related weakness. So, it’s not a huge surprise to see Zscaler down more than 20% in premarket trading on Wednesday after the cloud security company gave a softer customer growth outlook than expected, despite reporting solid results for its fiscal Q3.

Zscaler announced better-than-expected results across its key metrics for the quarter ended April 30, 2026, including revenue of $850 million (topping analyst estimates of $835 million, compiled by Bloomberg), annual recurring revenue (ARR) of $3.53 billion (vs. the $3.51 billion expected), and adjusted earnings per share of $1.08 (vs. expectations of $1.01).

But Zscaler’s ability to continue its winning streak is the main question — and as far as the company’s early guidance for new customer additions, its future looks bleaker than expected. The security firm now anticipates total ARR and revenue growth of 16% to 17% for fiscal 2027. In the nearer term, Zscaler also expects Q4 revenue to fall between $875 million and $878 million, with its upper limit below Wall Street estimates of $879 million.

Bloomberg Intelligence analysts noted that Zscaler’s fiscal 2027 ARR growth figure “suggests muted new customer additions are likely to weigh on the top line,” adding that the company “lacks identity security for AI agents in the suite, which may limit larger order closings.” Mizuho, RBC Capital Markets, and Evercore ISI analysts, similarly focusing on future guidance, also lowered their price targets for the stock following the call.

Separately, Citi analysts, who spoke to the company’s management following the results, suggested that new customer growth could provide some upside, as new logo growth wasn’t factored into the 2027 baseline. However, they also noted disruptions to the sales organization from two leadership changes, though the Zscaler’s CEO and CFO seem confident that those impacts will be absorbed, and don’t expect disruptions at the “quota-bearing level.”

Peers CrowdStrike and Palo Alto Networks also sank around 2% before the bell on Wednesday.

Tasha Matsumoto
22h
Stocks climb to new records amid peace prospects; chip stocks rally

Hopes of an imminent peace deal with Iran and reports that the US Navy has restarted shepherding vessels through the Strait of Hormuz sent stocks higher and oil prices lower.

Cowboy Riding a Bull - stock illustration

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