Hertz surges on bullish options activity

As millions begrudgingly make their way to the rental car counter amid the winter holidays, investors are pouring into call options and sending Hertz stock soaring.

As of 10:51 a.m. ET, Hertz had seen 17,861 calls traded. That’s already significantly ahead of the 20-day average volume of 12,956. Hertz shares are up more than 12%.

Seemingly juicing the rally was a post on X that read, “Car rental companies could end up being the picks and shovels of autonomy,” which was reposted by billionaire Bill Ackman, whose hedge fund is one of Hertz’s largest shareholders.

If Hertz’s price action holds, the move will mark its ninth-best trading day of 2025.

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Claire Yubin Oh41m

Sandisk rises on partnership with SK Hynix to standardize memory chip architecture tailored for AI data centers

Sandisk is up 3% in premarket trading on Thursday after it began its global standardization strategy of High Bandwidth Flash (HBF) memory solutions with SK Hynix.

SK Hynix commented in a press release on Thursday that, "by making HBF an industry standard, together with Sandisk, we will lay the foundation for the entire AI ecosystem to grow together,” adding that the companies will set up a dedicated workstream to work on the standardization under the Open Compute Project, the world’s largest organization dealing with data center technologies.

First debuted last February, Sandisk’s HBF technology lies in between ultra-fast memory HBMs and high capacity SSDs. That is, these have more storage capacity than HBMs, but are still fast enough to be utilized in AI inferencing (albeit not as quick as HBM).

Sandisk has previously argued that this hybrid architecture is central to AI services that need user applications but require a significant amount of fast interconnect between GPUs. The latest announcement also notes that HBF technology is expected to be more cost-efficient compared to alternatives of similar scale.

The launch, which was shared in an kick-off event on Thursday evening, starts SK Hynix and Sandisk’s workflow that was announced when the two companies signed a Memorandum of Understanding “to standardize the specification, define technology requirements and explore the creation of a technology ecosystem” last August, per Sandisk’s press release at the time. Ultimately, by collaborating with SK Hynix, one of the three key HBM suppliers, to standardize and commercialize the technology, Sandisk is manufacturing somewhat of a first-mover advantage to offer a system-level “AI-optimized memory architecture” required for AI inference markets, rather than focusing on the performance of a single chip element.

Max Knoblauch48m

Warner Bros. reports deeper-than-expected Q4 loss amid its bidding war

Warner Bros. Discovery reported its fourth-quarter earnings before the market opened on Thursday. The results come as the company finds itself in the middle of a still-hot bidding war between Netflix and Paramount. Its shares were flat in premarket trading.

In the three months ended in December, WBD reported:

A loss of $0.10 per share, deeper than the $0.03 loss expected by analysts polled by FactSet.
Total revenue of $9.46 billion, ahead of the $9.35 billion consensus.

Warner Bros.’ cable business booked $4.2 billion in revenue, beating estimates of $4.04 billion but down 12% from last year. The division is a key difference between the Netflix and Paramount acquisition offers: Netflix is seeking to acquire everything except Warner’s cable networks, while Paramount is seeking to purchase WBD in its entirety.

Industry analysts mostly view WBD’s cable networks as being worth between $2 to $4 per share, and Paramount’s most recent bid is $3.25 per share more than Netflix’s. Paramount has said its own analysis values Warner’s cable division at $0 per share.

WBD said it would not answer any questions about the two proposals on Thursday’s earnings call, but noted the following about Paramount’s recent offer:

“There can be no assurance that the Board will conclude that the transaction proposed by PSKY is superior to the merger with Netflix or that any definitive agreement or transaction will result from Warner Bros. Discovery’s discussions with PSKY.”

Luke Kawa

D-Wave Quantum pares gains after underwhelming Q4 results

The annealing-centric quantum computing company just released quarterly results.

Julich Research Center Inaugurates Europe's First 5,000+ Qubit Quantum Computer

Claire Yubin Oh2h

Zoom slumps on weaker-than-expected profit outlook, reports mixed Q4 earnings

Zoom fell 4% in premarket trading on Thursday after offering a profit outlook that came in lower than analysts had expected as part of its FY26 Q4 earnings results.

For the fiscal year ending in January 2027, the video conferencing platform company expects:

Adjusted earnings per share between $5.77 and $5.81, missing analysts’ average projection of $6.06 a share, per Bloomberg data.
Revenue between $5.065 billion and $5.075 billion.

The weak bottom line forecast came after lackluster adjusted profit results for Q4, which came in at $1.44 per share, compared with Wall Street estimates of $1.49. Revenue increased 5% year-on-year to $1.25 billion, just ahead of average analyst expectations.

The company maintained an optimistic tone on its mixed FY26 results, with CEO Eric S. Yuan saying on the earnings call that “In the age of AI, Zoom becomes more essential. We are building the system of action that turns conversations into coordinated execution across work inside the organization and with the world outside, including customer engagement, sales, recruiting, and more.”

Indeed, Zoom has been doubling down on its office collaboration tools recently as it continues to turn towards serving enterprises after the pandemic boom, including launching a corporate phone system and a customer service platform, both of which can sometimes be heavily dependent on expensive AI models.

Hyunsoo Rim3h

Nvidia's Jensen Huang thinks markets “got it wrong” on software stocks sell-off

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said markets have misjudged AI’s impact on software firms in a CNBC interview on Wednesday, hours after the chip designer reported better-than-expected Q4 results and strong sales outlook for the current quarter.

So far this year, a slew of software stocks, like Adobe, DocuSign, and Workday, have cratered amid mounting concerns that AI agents would eventually displace traditional enterprise software models.

Huang, however, said he believes “the markets got it wrong,” describing agentic AI as “tool users” of existing software rather than a threat to it.

Products like Microsoft Excel, or platforms such as Cadence, Synopsys, ServiceNow, and SAP all “exist for a fundamentally good reason,” he said, adding that agentic AI will be using those tools “on our behalf and help us be more productive.”

The leader of the world’s most valuable publicly traded company has struck a consistent tone on this subject, perhaps because some of his biggest customers and most eager adopters of AI are in this industry. Earlier this month, Huang called the idea that the software industry would be replaced by AI the “most illogical thing in the world,” arguing that AI agents will leverage existing software tools rather than reinvent them.

Nvidia’s Jensen Huang says markets ‘got it wrong’ on AI threat to software companies

So far this year, a slew of software stocks, like Adobe, DocuSign, and Workday, have cratered amid mounting concerns that AI agents would eventually displace traditional enterprise software models.

Huang, however, said he believes “the markets got it wrong,” describing agentic AI as “tool users” of existing software rather than a threat to it.

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