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Luke Kawa

POET Technologies slumps after reporting larger-than-expected Q3 loss

There’s been a deep sell-off in formerly high-flying, speculative tech stocks as of late. Third-quarter results from POET Technologies are digging the company a bigger hole, with shares down double digits as of 7:20 a.m. ET.

The optical communications company reported a loss of $0.11 per share for Q3, worse than the $0.09 loss per share that analysts anticipated, per FactSet.

Revenues for the quarter were limited, at under $300,000, but should begin to pick up more meaningfully in the second half of next year, when the company expects it’ll begin to ship optical engines that were recently ordered.

“The placement of two successive initial production orders from two key customers valued at over $5.6 million is the beginning of a revenue ramp which we expect to increase steadily throughout 2026,” said Dr. Suresh Venkatesan, chairman and CEO of POET Technologies.

Venkatesan previously told us that the company’s focus this year “has been to cross that last hurdle of ensuring that the technology that we’re developing is truly manufacturable at scale and at wafer scale.”

For POET, and for the broader speculative tech space at large, it’s seemingly going to take something else to arrest and reverse their recent swoons.

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Live Nation beats Q4 revenue estimates

The company reported earnings results on Thursday.

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AMD to “effectively guarantee” a loan to AI startup Crusoe that will be used to purchase its chips, The Information reports

Advanced Micro Devices will “effectively guarantee” a $300 million loan to data center company Crusoe from Goldman Sachs, according to The Information.

That is, Crusoe is taking out a loan to purchase AMD’s chips, and the chips that it’s purchasing are being used as collateral for that loan.

You’d be forgiven for thinking that this sounds an awful lot like a very common form of borrowing done by American families: borrowing money to buy a house, and having the home be collateral for the mortgage.

One big difference, of course, is that your home is expected to appreciate in value, while AI chips are expected to depreciate in value as they’re used. (The silver lining, however, is that so far these processors haven’t lost value too quickly.)

Another difference is that AMD, per the report, has agreed to rent these chips from Crusoe if it can’t find customers for this compute, which helped reduced the interest rate Crusoe will pay on this loan.

Similarly, in September, Nvidia agreed to buy any of CoreWeave’s unused cloud computing capacity through April 13, 2032, for $6.3 billion.

Rather than get overly hung up on “circular financing” elements, I’d probably frame the issue here like this: everyone wants AI chips. AMD sells AI chips. And yet, in both this deal and the most high-profile one we know about (AMD’s pact with OpenAI), the chip designer seems to be having to go the extra mile to get companies to use its AI chips. You might recall that as part of the OpenAI agreement, AMD issued warrants that enable the ChatGPT developer to receive 160 million shares, or about 10% of the company, if certain operational and stock price targets are hit over time.

Why is it so tough to get buyers on normal terms? My guess would be that this either says something negative about the financing environment for AI startups or the perception of AMD’s AI chips.

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Rental car companies drop amid volatile demand following an “unacceptable” Q4 from Avis

Rental car company Avis shed roughly $1 billion in market cap on Thursday as its stock fell more than 23% following the company’s Q4 results, which CEO Brian Choi called “unacceptable.”

Avis’ adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization came in at $5 million on the quarter, a massive miss compared to the $145.4 million expected by Wall Street analysts polled by FactSet.

Avis said commercial rental days fell 11% in November, as thousands of flights were canceled amid the government shutdown. That led Avis to reduce its fleet size in Q4, “the most difficult period to sell used vehicles.” The company also took a $500 million write-down on its EV fleet at year-end.

“When operational performance speaks for itself, we earn the right to focus on the bigger picture. This quarter, we didn’t earn that right. We fell significantly short of guidance. That’s unacceptable, and I have no excuses to offer,” Choi said on the company’s earnings call.

Avis said it expects lower earnings in the first quarter of 2026, as January was also impacted by weather-related flight cancellations. Rival Hertz was dragged down in the sell-off, dropping more than 14%.

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