Markets
Palantir Shares Price Record High
A new high (Nicolas Economou/Getty Images)

Palantir shares reach new all-time high

Excitement over CEO Alex Karp’s proximity to President Trump and the flurry of deal announcements in the Middle East seem to be playing a role for one of the top Trump trades.

Matt Phillips

Palantir shares closed at a new record high of $128.10 on Tuesday and continued to gain altitude Wednesday as the data, surveillance, and AI software firm basks the reflected glory of a series of market-moving deal announcements accompanying President Trump’s trek to the Middle East.

Palantir CEO Alex Karp is among the coterie of American tech and finance executives trailing after the president on his travels to the wealthy authoritarian petro kingdoms that dominate the region.

According to Business Insider, Karp — known for his bombast — praised Saudi computer engineering talent and took a swipe at Europe, saying it has “given up” on AI in a speech Tuesday. (The European Union has taken a more stringent regulatory approach to the technology.)

Palantir hasn’t yet been mentioned publicly in deals that are being announced as part of the trip, such as the $20 billion deal Super Micro Computer signed with Data Volt, a Saudi data center operator; Nvidia’s AI partnership with the Kingdom; or Qatar’s giant purchase of jets from Boeing. But it seems that just being in orbit of the billions of dollars being doled out is having a favorable impact on the stock.

“The tone in Riyadh has been about the bright green light on the massive AI buildout in Saudi and this could open up a huge opportunity and [total addressable market] for Nvidia, Palantir, Microsoft, Amazon, Alphabet, Tesla and many other well positioned chip/software names over the coming years,” Wedbush Securities analyst and well-established tech bull Dan Ives wrote in a note Wednesday.

Palantir’s proximity to Trump’s trip, which blends corporate business with diplomatic relations to an usual degree, seems to shed some light on why Palantir soared in the aftermath of the election, becoming one of the cornerstones of the so-called Trump trades.

The rationale for the run-up was always somewhat murky, but political, and potentially lucrative political connections to the administration — such as those on display as part of Trump’s Middle East trip — were clearly part of what the market was pricing in. That’s especially important for Palantir, as its largest customer remains the US government.

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Luke Kawa

Applied Digital, WeRide, and Recursion Pharmaceuticals dip as Nvidia exits positions

Three stocks took a dip in after hours trading on Tuesday after Nvidia’s 13F filing showed the chip designer sold its stake over the final three months of 2025:

  • Applied Digital, a data center operator in which Nvidia was the seventh-largest holder as of the end of Q3.

    • That being said, Nvidia still has some quasi-direct Applied Digital exposure through its still-substantial CoreWeave position. The neocloud acquired warrants in APLD last June.

  • WeRide, the Chinese self-driving firm.

  • Recursion Pharmaceuticals, which engages in AI-driven drug development.

Nvidia also sold its holdings of Arm Holdings, but that was offset by some good news: part of Nvidia’s expanded pact with Meta will see Arm-based CPUs assume a more prominent role in data center environments, which may help boost its volumes and selling prices.

Nvidia added positions in Nokia, Intel, and Synopsys in Q4, all of which had been previously announced via press releases. Its Coreweave and Nebius positions were unchanged relative to Q3.

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Nvidia enhances partnership with social media giant Meta to deploy “millions” of its GPUs

Winners: Nvidia, ARM. Losers: AMD, Broadcom, Intel, Arista.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang interviews Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg at the 2024 SIGGRAPH conference in Denver, CO on July 29, 2024.
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Luke Kawa

Sandisk drops after Western Digital confirms plan to unload $3 billion in stock

Western Digital is cashing in more of its Sandisk position.

The hard drive seller is exchanging more than $3 billion in Sandisk shares as part of a debt-for-equity swap.

The two companies were once one, but Western Digital spun off a little more than 80% of its flash drive business in February 2025, and already exchanged the lion’s share of what remained in a separate debt-for-equity swap in June.

This move was very, very well telegraphed by Western Digital, which recently confirmed plans to monetize its Sandisk position before the one-year anniversary of that split (February 21). And Sandisk’s press release makes clear that the company is not the one selling more stock or making any money off of this.

That being said, being a high-flying stock that has a Bloomberg headline with “secondary offering” in it could, in theory, spark some turbulence.

Shares of Sandisk have indeed extended the day’s losses to more than 8% in the after-hours session before paring some of that decline.

Western Digital announces additional $4 billion in share buybacks, with management poised to unload its remaining stake in Sandisk

The two companies were once one, but Western Digital spun off a little more than 80% of its flash drive business in February 2025, and already exchanged the lion’s share of what remained in a separate debt-for-equity swap in June.

This move was very, very well telegraphed by Western Digital, which recently confirmed plans to monetize its Sandisk position before the one-year anniversary of that split (February 21). And Sandisk’s press release makes clear that the company is not the one selling more stock or making any money off of this.

That being said, being a high-flying stock that has a Bloomberg headline with “secondary offering” in it could, in theory, spark some turbulence.

Shares of Sandisk have indeed extended the day’s losses to more than 8% in the after-hours session before paring some of that decline.

markets
Luke Kawa

Cadence Design Systems jumps after Q4 earnings, 2026 profit outlook, and sales backlog exceed estimates

Cadence Design Systems jumped in after-hours trading on Tuesday, briefly erasing the day’s big losses, after posting better-than-expected Q4 earnings, a big pipeline of future business, and a solid profit outlook for 2026.

For Q4, the electronic design automation company reported:

  • Sales of $1.44 billion (estimate: $1.42 billion).

  • Adjusted earnings per share of $1.99 (estimate: $1.91).

  • Remaining performance obligations (RPO) of $7.8 billion (estimate: $7.25 billion).

Management said that 2026 adjusted earnings per share would range between $8.05 and $8.15, above the consensus call for $8.03.

In recent weeks, investors have worried that Cadence’s software business, which is used by chip designers, could suffer competitive pressure from AI tools. At the very least, that RPO figure says there’s billions of dollars standing between Cadence and any more disrupted future.

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Infleqtion CEO Matt Kinsella on how the newly public quantum computing company is “following in the footsteps of Nvidia”

Infleqtion shares gained double digits in their opening session, while peers sold off.

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