SoundHound AI jumped Tuesday after announcing a partnership with Red Lobster for an AI-powered phone ordering agent for takeout that will roll out across all the seafood chain’s locations.
The stock, which was a big favorite of retail shareholders last year when it delivered gains of 835%, has had a far rougher 2025. It was down as much as 60% back in April, but has clawed back to cut its year-to-date loss to roughly 7%.
Palantir was less than 3% from its all-time closing high price in early trading Tuesday, with shares continuing a run that has carried them up nearly 20% since a recent low on September 5.
There’s no major news on the stock, but the defense and AI software company did collect a price target hike from Bank of America’s analysts. They slapped a $215 price objective on the shares, a roughly 18% premium to where the stock currently trades and the highest among the published price targets tracked by FactSet.
In their note, BofA’s analysts focused on the company’s usage of “forward deployed engineers” or FDEs, Palantir software workers who collaborate closely with clients to help organize, refine, structure, and connect the various pipelines of data that companies want to work with Palantir’s AI software. (I recently wrote a bit about them here.)
BofA’s stock scribes wrote:
“We see the AI FDEs as an accelerator of growth. By successfully implementing these breakthrough capabilities inhouse, the company will benefit from increased demand, scalability and empowered engineers that can focus on the most complex problems. We think more customers will be attracted to buy Palantir’s operating system (vs build their own) to accelerate the implementation of AI agents that extend their own unique abilities and core expertise. Additionally, these AI FDEs will allow Palantir engineers and the customers themselves to continue to create new use cases.”
In their note, BofA’s analysts focused on the company’s usage of “forward deployed engineers” or FDEs, Palantir software workers who collaborate closely with clients to help organize, refine, structure, and connect the various pipelines of data that companies want to work with Palantir’s AI software. (I recently wrote a bit about them here.)
BofA’s stock scribes wrote:
“We see the AI FDEs as an accelerator of growth. By successfully implementing these breakthrough capabilities inhouse, the company will benefit from increased demand, scalability and empowered engineers that can focus on the most complex problems. We think more customers will be attracted to buy Palantir’s operating system (vs build their own) to accelerate the implementation of AI agents that extend their own unique abilities and core expertise. Additionally, these AI FDEs will allow Palantir engineers and the customers themselves to continue to create new use cases.”
Nvidia is in the business of giving tech bigwigs the tools to try to create God, and in the process, the chip designer has made more money than God.
Bank of America analyst Vivek Arya believes the company is poised to generate hundreds of billions in free cash flow over the next few years as it benefits from the AI boom. Management has to do something with all that money, which helps explain recent investments in OpenAI and Intel, in his view.
“Unlike the old days, investing in other public assets has become difficult given lack of strategic fit and the burdensome regulatory process,” he wrote. “Hence the only other alternative (beyond returning to investors) is to invest in the ecosystem to expand the size of the addressable opportunity that could multiply future benefits, or accelerate time to market for new products, and/or for geopolitical benefits (such as recent INTC investment).”
Investing in its customers is just another way of investing in its own success. And investing in the likes of Intel is a way to add some depth to its product shelf, and perhaps curry some political favor in the process.
Nvidia has been doing this up and down the supply chain, with investments in Applied Digital, Arm Holdings, CoreWeave (which is acquiring Core Scientific), and Nebius Group.
To re-up my previous thoughts on Nvidia’s “House of GPUs,” this degree of implicit vertical integration and platform deepening can be best understood as CEO Jensen Huang trying to ensure that all the possible near-term demand for AI that can be met is met through Nvidia, one way or another.
And accelerating time to market may not be the most desired outcome; as long as Nvidia’s offerings continue to be considered market-leading, advancing too quickly may effectively short-circuit the length of product cycles.
Firefly Aerospace, a Texas-based midcap builder of space launch vehicles, dove in early trading Tuesday after posting its first quarterly report since its August IPO.
Results were worse than expected. Sales dropped 26% to $15.5 million. And the company posted an adjusted loss per share of $5.78, compared to a loss of $4.60 per share last year.
Plug Power’s romp higher on heavy volumes continues apace.
Nearly 30 million shares have changed hands as of 9:27 a.m. ET, making Plug the second-most-traded stock on US exchanges and propelling the stock up double digits.
There’s little in the way of fundamental news to speak of behind Plug’s recent surge, which has seen shares nearly double since September 12.
If the stock ends higher today, it will mark 10 straight day of gains for the hydrogen fuel cell company, its longest winning streak on record.
Outside of the explosion in volumes in mid-May (after the stock had hit its lowest level in over a decade) and Plug’s meme stock moment in 2014, this is the hottest five-day average for volumes in the stock ever.
The rejuvenation of Opendoor Technologies’ share price has been a story of more buyers than sellers, particularly retail investors enthused by the change of leadership at the online real estate company.
The stock’s abrupt tumble on Monday — with the pain seemingly extending into the premarket on Tuesday — is what happens when selling pressure rises to the fore.
Access Industries, an investment firm run by Len Blavatnik, sold 11.36 million shares of Opendoor through its AI LiquidRE arm, with September 22 listed as the approximate date of sale, per a filing.
The investment firm is the third-largest holder of Opendoor shares, according to Bloomberg, trailing only new CEO Kaz Nejatian and index fund provider Vanguard.
Access Industries previously sold 10.87 million shares of Opendoor on September 12.
Its Access Technologies Venture arm was one of Opendoor’s early backers, cited as the lead investor in its Series C round back in October 2015.
