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Sofi Surges on Student Loan limits in Senate Bill
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SoFi soars as GOP cuts to federal student loans move toward passage

Cuts to federal student loan programs would likely move more borrowers to private lenders.

6/30/25 2:57PM

Student loan lender SoFi Technologies hit its highest price since November 2021 on Monday as Senate Republicans moved forward on President Trump’s giant budget bill, which would cut federal student lending programs and likely push borrowers to private lenders like SoFi.

Trading in bullish call options surged on the day, helping to catalyze a run-up of more than 10% in early trading. The shares gave back some of those early gains, but remained up more than 6% in the last hour of trading.

As the Washington Post reported in May, the bill would radically change, and in some cases, complicate, the current student lending system in the US.

The bill includes changes like cutting the Pell grants used by students from poor and middle-class families, ending the federal PLUS loan programs for graduate students, and imposing new limits on the total amount that can be borrowed for advanced degrees, such as medicine and law, to $150,000 and $100,000 for master’s degrees. The Post reported:

“Republicans say imposing borrowing limits on graduate programs could force institutions to lower their costs. But the restrictions may simply drive more students to the private lending markets, where there are fewer consumer protections, said Jon Fansmith, senior vice president for government relations at the American Council on Education (ACE).”

That’s how SoFi CEO Anthony Noto seems to see the situation as well.

On the company’s post-earnings conference call in late April, he told analysts, “If the government backs away from providing in-school loans, Grad PLUS, et cetera, et cetera, we’ll absolutely capture that opportunity.”

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Planet Labs slips after big post-earnings gain

Smallish midcap satellite imagery and data company Planet Labs is giving back a chunk of the nearly 50% gain it racked up after posting earnings early Monday.

No tears, though: the shares, which seem to have a fairly robust retail following, are still up roughly 340% over the past 12 months.

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CoreWeave soars as Microsoft’s deal with Nebius shows unrelenting demand for AI compute

CoreWeave is soaring as Microsoft’s $17.4 billion deal with Nebius shows the immense value and continued demand for all parts of the AI data center ecosystem.

One additional reason for CoreWeave’s jump may be that its pending acquisition of AI data center infrastructure company Core Scientific looks like a great deal compared to Microsoft’s renting of (more broad and advanced) AI data center capacity from Nebius.

CoreWeave’s all-stock deal to buy Core Scientific was initially valued at ~$9 billion, but with the subsequent decline in its shares, it’s worth about 40% less. And in purchasing Core Scientific, CoreWeave is saving $10 billion in what it would have paid the company to lease data center infrastructure over the next 12 years.

As it stands, Microsoft is getting about 300 megawatts in data center power capacity from Nebius, while Core Scientific boasts that its footprint is in excess of 1,300 megawatts. So, on the surface, it looks like an absolute steal for CoreWeave.

But again, this is not an apples-to-apples comparison; not all access to AI computing infrastructure is created equal.

There are differences in the type of AI infrastructure provided by the two: Nebius owns GPUs, while Core Scientific doesn’t, and what it provides in the software layer isn’t offered by Core Scientific as a stand-alone entity. This is the difference between the “full stack” approach (Nebius) and a “colocation” approach (Core Scientific).

That being said, CoreWeave’s acquisition of Core Scientific, once completed, will make the combined entity’s business model look more like Nebius’ model, which, as Microsoft just told us, is something that top hyperscalers are willing to pay a pretty penny for.

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UNH rises after preliminary data shows most Medicare Advantage enrollees will be on more lucrative, top-rated plans

UnitedHealth rose more than 4% in premarket trading on Tuesday after the company disclosed that it expects the majority of its Medicare Advantage enrollees will be on plans rated four stars or higher in 2026.

Though the data is only preliminary, about 78% of UNH’s Medicare Advantage members are in plans rated four stars or higher, the company said in a regulatory filing Tuesday morning. On Monday, the company said it plans to reiterate its full-year guidance when it meets with investors this week.

Insurance companies that provide government-sponsored plans, like Medicare Advantage, have struggled this year amid unexpected rising costs. Plans that are rated four stars or higher earn bonus payments and are typically more lucrative for healthcare insurance providers.

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