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Hyunsoo Rim9/25/25

Intel rises as the company seeks Apple as next big backer amid turnaround push, per Bloomberg report

Not content with just having the US government and Nvidia as new shareholders, Intel has approached Apple about a possible investment as it seeks to revive its business, according to a report from Bloomberg.

The two companies have floated ideas on working more closely, though the discussions are “early-stage" and may not lead to a deal. Intel has also reached out to other companies about potential partnerships.

The move comes after a wave of equity investments in the chipmaker: last week, Nvidia committed $5 billion to acquire a stake in Intel and codevelop data center and PC chips. In August, SoftBank bought $2 billion worth of Intel shares, and the US government secured an $8.9 billion (~10%) stake to support domestic chip production.

In recent years, Intel has been losing ground to rivals, with sales peaking at $77.9 billion in 2020 and declining since. The company has also scaled back plans for new chip factories and is cutting about 22% of its workforce by the end of this year.

For Apple, the talk revives a long relationship with Intel: Apple sourced its Mac processors from Intel since 2006 before switching to its own in-house silicon in 2020.

Shares of Intel jumped nearly 4% in premarket trading Thursday, and are up 42% year to date. Apple is down less than 1% premarket.

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Plug Power reports modestly positive Q3 results after topsy-turvy session

Plug Power is little changed in after-hours trading after posting Q3 results a bit ahead of estimates.

The on-again, off-again meme stock and hydrogen fuel cell company reported:

Revenue: $177.1 million (estimate: $175.05 million)

Adjusted earnings per share: -$0.12 (estimate: -$0.13)

In its Q2 results, Plug has set a goal of achieving gross margin breakeven on a run-rate basis as an exit rate for Q4 2025 (that is, ending the quarter in a position where revenues at least equal cost of goods sold). This goal was not reiterated in the press release for Q3.

Plug popped double-digits in premarket trading earlier today after announcing that it “has signed a non-binding Letter of Intent to monetize its electricity rights in New York and one other location and collaborate with a US data center developer.” However, that news was apparently overshadowed by Plug another tidbit in the release: that the company would be abandoning its pursuit of a $1.7 billion loan guarantee from the US Department of Energy (and along with it, projects that would have boosted its hydrogen production).

Toby Bochan, Luke Kawa

US stocks rally amid hopes of the government shutdown ending soon

The AI trade was also back on in full force, and the S&P 500, Nasdaq 100, and Russell all enjoyed a strong start to the week

BKN-BULLS-JAZZ-JORDAN DUNK

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Max Knoblauch3h

Rivian climbs following EV maker’s new CEO pay package worth up to $4.6 billion

Shares of EV maker Rivian are up more than 6% on Monday, following the announcement Friday evening that it will award CEO RJ Scaringe a pay package of up to $4.6 billion over the next decade.

The news came a day after Tesla shareholders approved CEO Elon Musk’s $1 trillion pay package, and investors appear hopeful that the incentives will pay off for Rivian stock. Under the tenure of Scaringe, who is also Rivian’s founder, the company’s stock has dropped more than 90% from its peak in 2021.

To earn the full pay package, Scaringe will need to achieve stock price milestones of between $40 and $140, along with other undisclosed targets tied to cash flow and operating profit.

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Matt Phillips4h

Alex Karp explains what Palantir does, in his own words

Palantir’s iconoclastic CEO, Alex Karp, sat down with Wired’s Steven Levy for a Q&A published Monday. The discussion yields little of specific note for shareholders, focusing mostly on the more controversial aspects of the company’s work with Israel and United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), among other cultural hot buttons.

But there was one interchange in which Karp was asked for his own explanation of what Palantir actually does, which seems to shed some light on Karp’s vision for the company:

A lot of people say that it isn’t clear exactly what Palantir does. Can you explain it in your own words?

If you’re an intelligence agency, you’re using us to find terrorists and organized criminals while maintaining the security and data protection of your country. Then you have the special forces. How do you know where your troops are? How do you get in and out of the battlefield as safely as possible, avoiding mines, avoiding enemies? Then there’s Palantir on the commercial side. The shorthand is if you’re doing anything that involves operational intelligence, whether it’s analytics or AI, you’re going to have to find something like our products.

Basically, it’s about orchestrating information with AI, which is something lots of companies in Silicon Valley want to do. But you contend that no other tech company can do it like yours.

What I’m really saying is we know how to do it. If you find someone else who can do it, and you don’t want to work with us, buy it from them.

Thanks to an upswing in the AI trade, shortly before noon Palantir shares were having their best day since early August. But the stock remains down by more than 8% since it reported objectively fantastic earnings a week ago, then slumped amid a breakout of market jitters over high valuations.

Alex Karp Goes to War

Alex Karp Goes to War

But there was one interchange in which Karp was asked for his own explanation of what Palantir actually does, which seems to shed some light on Karp’s vision for the company:

A lot of people say that it isn’t clear exactly what Palantir does. Can you explain it in your own words?

If you’re an intelligence agency, you’re using us to find terrorists and organized criminals while maintaining the security and data protection of your country. Then you have the special forces. How do you know where your troops are? How do you get in and out of the battlefield as safely as possible, avoiding mines, avoiding enemies? Then there’s Palantir on the commercial side. The shorthand is if you’re doing anything that involves operational intelligence, whether it’s analytics or AI, you’re going to have to find something like our products.

Basically, it’s about orchestrating information with AI, which is something lots of companies in Silicon Valley want to do. But you contend that no other tech company can do it like yours.

What I’m really saying is we know how to do it. If you find someone else who can do it, and you don’t want to work with us, buy it from them.

Thanks to an upswing in the AI trade, shortly before noon Palantir shares were having their best day since early August. But the stock remains down by more than 8% since it reported objectively fantastic earnings a week ago, then slumped amid a breakout of market jitters over high valuations.

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The AI trade roars back after its worst week since April tariff announcements

The AI trade is roaring back after getting speed checked last week.

Baskets of US AI beneficiaries compiled by Morgan Stanley and Bank of America, which just suffered their worst week since the Rose Garden tariffs announcement, are up more than 3.5% in early trading to lead a broad-based market recovery amid optimism that the government shutdown will soon be over.

The likes of Palantir Technologies (which tumbled despite reporting strong results), Western Digital, and Seagate Technology Holdings are all up more than 4.5% as of 10:45 a.m. ET.

Semiconductor stocks are also rallying strongly after Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang asked his counterpart at TSMC to boost chip output.

“While the bears will continue to yell ‘AI Bubble’ from their hibernation caves we continue to point to this tech cap-ex supercycle that is driving this 4th Industrial Revolution into the next few years,” Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives wrote. “This is our focus and along with our AI use case work in the field is driving trillions of spending over the next few years and thus will keep this tech bull market alive for at least another 2 years in our view.”

Bank of America argues (convincingly) that last week’s retreat in the cohort had little to do with any industry-specific fundamental news.

“The pervasive skepticism re AI capex is understandable but likely a contrarian positive, helping minimize overcrowding,” Bank of America analyst Vivek Arya wrote in a note reaffirming his conviction on his preferred data center and semicap stocks. “Yes, large-cap AI semis have been volatile (down 7-8% on average last week) but we argue that was driven by (correctable) macro factors (US govt. shutdown, weak jobs data, tariff turmoil, misstated OpenAI comments) rather than any negative datapoint about the AI spending cycle.”

Further bolstering that argument, 22V Research flagged how earnings expectations are improving much more rapidly for AI-linked firms than the S&P 500 at large.

“AI usage and AI related fundamentals are unusually strong,” wrote Dennis DeBusschere, chief market strategist at 22V Research. “In 3Q, AI earnings growth rate has been ~3x that of other S&P names.”

22V Research earnings trends

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