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Nia Warfield6/17/25

T-Mobile sinks after SoftBank dumps $4.9 billion of its stock in the telecom giant

T-Mobile shares fell over 4% Tuesday after SoftBank sold off a big chunk of its stake in the telecom company.

The Japanese tech conglomerate offloaded 21.5 million shares at $224 each, at the low end of the expected $224 to $228 range, raising about $4.9 billion. For perspective on how big the sale is, it represents about 1.9% of T-Mobile’s public stock. Still, SoftBank owned 85.4 million shares, or 7.5% of T-Mobile, as of March 31.

It’s the largest US block trade since TD Bank sold a $13 billion stake in Schwab back in February.

SoftBank says the sale will help fund its growing wave of AI investments. Founder Masayoshi Son has been all in on artificial intelligence. He’s reportedly overseeing an up to $30 billion investment into OpenAI and partnering with the ChatGPT maker on a global data center buildout known as Stargate. The plan, which could funnel hundreds of billions into AI infrastructure, had hit a speed bump as debt financing got tricky amid tariff uncertainty.

T-Mobile shares are still up 24% over the past 12 months.

SoftBank Sells T-Mobile Stake for $4.8 Billion to Bet on AI

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It’s the largest US block trade since TD Bank sold a $13 billion stake in Schwab back in February.

SoftBank says the sale will help fund its growing wave of AI investments. Founder Masayoshi Son has been all in on artificial intelligence. He’s reportedly overseeing an up to $30 billion investment into OpenAI and partnering with the ChatGPT maker on a global data center buildout known as Stargate. The plan, which could funnel hundreds of billions into AI infrastructure, had hit a speed bump as debt financing got tricky amid tariff uncertainty.

T-Mobile shares are still up 24% over the past 12 months.

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Applied Digital whipsaws after posting quarterly revenue beat in Q1

Shares of Applied Digital are gyrating down and up and down again in postmarket trading after the company reported better-than-expected results for its fiscal Q1, the three-month period ended August 31.

The data center company, which counts Nvidia and CoreWeave among its major share and warrant holders, booked $64.2 million in revenues (estimate: $46.1 million) with an adjusted diluted loss per share of $0.03 (estimate: loss of $0.13).

“With hyperscalers expected to invest approximately $350 billion into AI deployment this year, we believe we are in a prime position to serve as the modern-day picks and shovels of the intelligence era,” Chairman and CEO Wes Cummins said.

The options-implied move for the stock on earnings is a whopping 17.6%, per Bloomberg data.

Applied Digital is also one of the components in the Roundhill Meme Stock ETF, which relaunched this week.

Tasha Matsumoto

Stocks retreat from records

The S&P 500, Nasdaq 100, and Russell 2000 all closed lower.

Mascot Clark the Cub poses before a Spring Training game between the Chicago Cubs a the Seattle Mariners at Sloan Park

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Matt Phillips13h

AST SpaceMobile soars again, up 80% in October

Another day, another giant gain for satellite services provider AST SpaceMobile, which continues to get a lift from its announcement earlier this week that it has signed a deal with telecom giant Verizon to provide some cellular broadband services from its satellites by 2026.

Retail enthusiasm for the stock, despite the fact that it has posted growing losses over the last four years, is high, helped out by a fair amount of online boosterism.

JPMorgan analysts have AST on their list of “most hyped stocks on social media,” which they included in their “Retail Radar” note published Thursday. A quick glance at r/WallStreetBets or volumes of call options — which hit their highest level in over a year yesterday — would seem to confirm retail participation.

It’s been a good trade. AST SpaceMobile is up more than 2,500% over the last two years, a rally that has created more than $20 billion in stock market wealth. To the moon, indeed.

Matt Phillips16h

Analysts at consulting firm Pantheon Macroeconomics estimate that the stock market’s enthusiasm for all things AI has added some $8.5 trillion to aggregate US household wealth since late 2022. They wrote:

“The S&P 500 returned about 70% between the start of ChatGPT mania around the end of 2022 to the end of Q2 2025, with roughly half of those returns generated by the ‘magnificent seven’ tech stocks, a very rough proxy for the stock market boost from AI euphoria.

We estimate that translates into a lift to household wealth held in stocks of about $8.5T.”

As my colleague Luke Kawa recently wrote, stock market wealth seems to be underpinning US consumer spending, especially among the richest Americans. Some of that spending may retrench if AI is indeed a bubble — as some have recently mooted — and eventually pops.

Analysts break down what’s driving SoFi’s recent surge

Part of the rally is related to the federal government’s retreat from student lending. But there’s more to it.

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