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Luke Kawa12/10/25

China’s DeepSeek is using banned Blackwell chips to train its newest AI model, The Information reports

DeepSeek, the Chinese AI startup whose chatbot built on the cheap turned the US tech world upside down in early 2025, is using “several thousand” of Nvidia’s top Blackwell chips to build its next model, per The Information.

The outlet cites six people with knowledge on the scheme, where the advanced chips, which are not allowed to be sold to China, make their way into the world’s second-largest economy piecemeal after servers are disassembled.

Nvidia told Bloomberg, “While such smuggling seems farfetched, we pursue any tip we receive.”

The Trump administration recently gave the go-ahead for Nvidia to send the H200, the best chips from its Hopper generation, to China. Though the US president teased discussing the possibility of permitting Blackwell sales ahead of his meeting with President Xi at the end of October, that item was not on the agenda.

DeepSeek said that its V3 model — the one that captured global attention earlier this year — was trained using Nvidia’s H800 GPUs, but some observers in the AI industry argued that the startup likely had access to more advanced compute. The White House and the FBI reportedly investigated this amid signs of chip smuggling.

Earlier this year, Singapore charged a group of men with fraud for allegedly routing servers containing Nvidia chips to Malaysia (with their ultimate destination unknown, but presumed to be China).

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J. Edward Moreno8m

AB InBev reports Q1 sales, adjusted EPS above estimates as beer volumes rise

AB InBev, the world’s largest brewer, rose in premarket trading after it reported results that beat Wall Street estimates and its beer business grew for the first time since 2023.

For the first three months of 2026, the company reported:

Revenue at $15.3 billion, higher than the $14.7 billion analysts polled by FactSet were expecting.
Adjusted earnings per share of $0.97, greater than the $0.89 the Street was penciling in.

The Bud Light maker also affirmed its 2026 guidance, pricing in a boost from demand around this summer’s World Cup.

The company reported overall sales volume growth of 0.8% compared to the same point last year, marking the first year-over-year increase in three years. That growth was driven by beer volumes, which grew 1.2%, while non-beer volumes — such as ready-to-drink cocktails and seltzers — fell by 1.9% in the same period.

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Claire Yubin Oh15m

FIS rises on partnership with Anthropic to bring agentic AI to banking, starting with financial crimes

FIS jumped as much as 6% in premarket trading on Tuesday after the company announced a partnership with Anthropic to develop agentic AI for banking systems, starting with a focus on anti-money-laundering investigations.

The new AI agent will focus on improving efficiency in financial crime investigations, specifically by “automatically assembling evidence across a bank's core systems, evaluating activity against known typologies, and surfacing the highest-risk cases for investigator review,” per Fidelity National Information's press release.

BMO and Amalgamated Bank will purportedly be the first institutions to deploy the agent, with broader implementations planned in the second half of 2026. Anthropic’s Applied AI team will be embedded within the company to co-design the first AI agent and transfer knowledge so FIS can build additional agents independently in the future.

FIS plans to develop further curated agents — spanning credit decisioning, deposit retention, customer onboarding, and fraud prevention — for its financial institution clients on its platform.

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Apple in talks with Intel and Samsung to produce chips for US devices

Apple has held early-stage talks with Intel and Samsung about producing the main processors for its devices in the US, according to Bloomberg.

The discussions include initial talks with Intel about enlisting its chipmaking services, as well as visits by Apple executives to the Samsung chip plant that’s being developed in Texas. The conversations with both companies remain preliminary and no agreements have been made so far, per the report.

The potential move would give Apple a secondary option beyond its long-standing reliance on TSMC, which has handled production of its main processors for more than a decade. Apple is exploring alternatives partly due to ongoing supply constraints amid strong demand for advanced chips tied to AI growth — constraints which have limited its ability to meet demand for iPhones and Macs, CEO Tim Cook said on last week’s earnings call.

Still, Apple has concerns about whether Intel and Samsung can can match TSMC’s manufacturing consistency and scale, and may not ultimately move forward with either partner, Bloomberg reports. Both companies currently trail the Taiwanese chipmaker in advanced chip manufacturing, with Intel still early in its foundry turnaround efforts and Samsung still a distant second to TSMC in the foundry market.

Intel, which had its best day since the 1980s a little over a week ago, rose nearly 4% in premarket trading Tuesday, while Apple was little changed and Samsung didn’t trade due to a market holiday in South Korea.

Apple Explores Using Intel, Samsung to Build Device Processors

Apple Explores Using Intel, Samsung to Build Device Processors

The potential move would give Apple a secondary option beyond its long-standing reliance on TSMC, which has handled production of its main processors for more than a decade. Apple is exploring alternatives partly due to ongoing supply constraints amid strong demand for advanced chips tied to AI growth — constraints which have limited its ability to meet demand for iPhones and Macs, CEO Tim Cook said on last week’s earnings call.

Still, Apple has concerns about whether Intel and Samsung can can match TSMC’s manufacturing consistency and scale, and may not ultimately move forward with either partner, Bloomberg reports. Both companies currently trail the Taiwanese chipmaker in advanced chip manufacturing, with Intel still early in its foundry turnaround efforts and Samsung still a distant second to TSMC in the foundry market.

Intel, which had its best day since the 1980s a little over a week ago, rose nearly 4% in premarket trading Tuesday, while Apple was little changed and Samsung didn’t trade due to a market holiday in South Korea.

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Duolingo tumbles despite better-than-expected Q1 results

Traders are crying foul over the green owl.

Duolingo posted better-than-expected first-quarter results, calling it an “outstanding start to the year.”

But the market seems to disagree, with shares down more than 10% in after-hours trading.

Here are the Q1 details:

Revenue of $292 million (compared to analyst estimates of $288.5 million).
Adjusted EBITDA of $83.4 million (estimate: $73.5 million).
Daily active users of 56.5 million (estimate: 55.7 million).
Paid subscribers of 12.5 million (estimate: 12.7 million).

The company also boosted its full-year adjusted EBITDA guidance to $310 million, up from a prior range of $299 million to $305 million, and solidified its revenue outlook to $1.21 billion, the midpoint of its previous range.

The first quarter’s top- and bottom-line beats are larger than the changes to its full-year guidance. This may be Duolingo’s way of keeping expectations low, but on the surface it could be viewed as a sign that the good news for 2026 is already in the rearview mirror.

The language-learning app hit all-time highs more than a year ago and has been in free fall ever since, losing over 75% of its value as investors grapple with the effects of artificial intelligence on the foreign language business.

Duolingo’s user growth has slowed meaningfully in recent quarters, and has been decelerating for years. The company blamed some of this on choosing to forgo some of its unhinged social media posting, trading off user growth for a more positive experience. Whatever the reason, the slowing in user growth continued in Q1, with the app showing a 21.2% increase in daily active users compared to 2025. The deceleration was softer than feared, however, outperforming its guidance and the Street’s call.

Going forward, CEO and cofounder Luis von Ahn sees room to expand in some areas that might seem a little far afield for a language-learning app, until you remember how gamified nearly every app experience is these days.

“We are moving quickly to prioritize the product and free user experience, while also investing in our next engines of growth, like chess, math, and music. We have conviction this is ultimately what will make us a larger and more durable company,” he wrote.

markets

Matt Phillips15h

Palantir beats on earnings and revenue, raises guidance

Palantir reported Q1 sales and earnings per share that topped Wall Street’s consensus expectations and boosted its revenue and profit guidance. The defense, intelligence, and AI software company reported:

Adjusted Q1 earnings per share of $0.33 vs. Wall Street expectations for $0.28, according to FactSet.
Q1 sales of $1.63 billion vs. an expected $1.54 billion, per FactSet.
Q1 sales growth of 85% year over year vs. a 74.5% Wall Street expectation.
Q1 US commercial sales of $595 million vs. the $605 million consensus of seven analyst estimates collected by FactSet.

Looking forward, Palantir forecast:

Q2 2026 revenue in the range of $1.797 billion to $1.801 billion, vs. Wall Street expectations for $1.68 billion.
Q2 2026 adjusted operating income between $1.063 billion and $1.067 billion, vs. an expectation for $873.6 million.
Full-year 2026 revenue in the range of $7.65 billion to $7.662 billion, vs. its previous estimate of between $7.182 billion and $7.198 billion and Wall Street expectations for $7.24 billion.
Full-year 2026 adjusted operating income between $4.440 billion and $4.452 billion, vs. its previous estimate of between $4.136 billion and $4.142 billion and analyst expectations for $4.19 billion, according to FactSet.

Shares were roughly flat shortly after the report.

A retail favorite since at least 2024, Palantir’s shares have struggled early in 2026, falling about 18% through Monday’s close. The problem isn’t with the fundamentals, as Palantir’s results have repeatedly trounced expectations for profitability and growth. (Though it did slightly undershoot expectations for Q1 US commercial sales, if one is being a stickler.)

It’s just that the market has given Palantir lots of credit over the last three years, during which time its shares soared roughly 1,900%. In the market’s view, perhaps Palantir’s sterling performance merely represents the company keeping its end of the bargain.

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