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Apple reports Q4 earnings and revenue slightly above Wall Street estimates

The iPhone maker reported its FY 25 fourth-quarter earnings Thursday.

Apple reported earnings Thursday that beat analysts’ expectations. Revenue for the iPhone maker’s fourth quarter was $102.5 billion, slightly above the $102.2 billion analysts surveyed by FactSet expected and up 8% year over year.

Apple’s diluted earnings per share were $1.85, compared with Wall Street’s $1.78 forecast for the quarter ended in September, which includes a couple weeks’ worth of new iPhone 17 sales.

The company’s fourth-quarter earnings give an indication of how the latest iPhone — which is responsible for most of Apple’s product revenue and nearly half its total revenue — might perform in the company’s all-important holiday quarter. The stock was recently propelled above a $4 trillion market cap, in part by leading indicators that suggested iPhone 17 sales were ahead of last year’s model.

During the company’s earnings call today, investors will be looking for more details on this quarter’s expected iPhone sales as well as for updates on Apple’s AI progress, which has lagged its peers. They will also be paying attention to how tariffs have affected the iPhone maker; on the company’s last earnings call, management said it expected tariffs could cost $1.1 billion during this past quarter.

For Q4, the company’s iPhone sales were $49 billion, shy of the analyst consensus estimate of $50.1 billion but up 6% from the same quarter last year. Meanwhile, the revenue from Apple’s Services division was $28.8 billion, slightly above the Street’s $28.2 billion forecast. Its Services revenue, while less visible, is increasingly important to the company’s top line. That segment includes everything from the revenue it makes from the App Store and iCloud storage to Apple TV and the ~$20 billion a year Google pays it to be the default search engine on its products.

“Today, Apple is very proud to report a September quarter revenue record of $102.5 billion, including a September quarter revenue record for iPhone and an all-time revenue record for Services,” CEO Tim Cook said in the earnings release.

China sales were a disappointing $14.5 billion, below analysts’ expectation of $15.5 billion.

The stock is up about 3.5% aftermarket.

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Lyft and Uber jump after announcing expanded robotaxi partnerships with Nvidia

Uber and Lyft both announced expanded AI and autonomous vehicle partnerships with Nvidia at the company’s GTC event, sending both ride-hailing stocks up after-hours on Monday and into Tuesday’s premarket session.

Uber is currently up more than 2%, while Lyft has risen around 1.3%.

Uber said Nvidia-powered Level 4 robotaxis will launch on its platform in Los Angeles and San Francisco in 2027, with plans to scale to 28 cities globally by 2028. Meanwhile, Lyft said it will use Nvidia’s AI infrastructure to improve ride-matching, mapping, and efficiency, while also using Nvidia’s DRIVE Hyperion platform as a foundation for future autonomous fleets.

Separately, Nvidia announced expanded autonomous driving partnerships with Kia and Hyundai.

The announcements highlight Nvidia’s growing push to provide the AI hardware and software powering next-generation robotaxi networks — packaging the technology needed for self-driving cars into a platform that other companies can use to compete with Tesla.

15

Tesla’s Robotaxi program has disclosed its 15th accident, Electrek reports, citing the latest filing from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. According to Electrek’s estimation, extrapolated from the last time Tesla disclosed mileage figures, that amounts to a crash every 57,000 miles — about 9x the rate for humans.

The latest crash involved a Model Y hitting a fixed object at 9 mph in January while the autonomous system was engaged.

Humans are very much still involved with Tesla’s so-called autonomous driving service. Despite the service announcing in January that it had started removing safety monitors from the front seats, only two unsupervised vehicles have been spotted in the last month, per Robotaxi Tracker. The entire fleet has also dwindled from around 50 vehicles to just 35. Their mileage is unavailable.

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Meta’s reported 20% layoff could bring headcount to its lowest level since 2021

Meta is rising Monday morning after Reuters reported the tech giant is planning to lay off 20% of its employees in an effort to use AI to make its workforce more efficient and offset its surging AI capex costs.

On the company’s last earnings call, CEO Mark Zuckerberg touted 30% efficiency gains for its software engineers and said some “power users” of the company’s AI coding tools saw productivity jump as high as 80% — what some saw as a veiled threat to employees who failed to use AI to boost their output.

Meta’s headcount was nearly 79,000 last quarter, having steadily risen since its layoffs during the self-described “year of efficiency” in 2023. A 20% cut would bring headcount to around 63,000 — the company’s lowest level since 2021.

Shares were recently up 2.7%.

Meta’s headcount was nearly 79,000 last quarter, having steadily risen since its layoffs during the self-described “year of efficiency” in 2023. A 20% cut would bring headcount to around 63,000 — the company’s lowest level since 2021.

Shares were recently up 2.7%.

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Report: Amid safety failures, ChatGPT’s planned “adult mode” caused concern within OpenAI, with minors misclassified as adults 12% of the time

Despite a series of alarming mental health safety failures that resulted in ChatGPT users allegedly using the product to plan suicides and murder, OpenAI decided to double down on its plan to roll out an “adult mode,” allowing the AI chatbot to produce erotic content.

That decision raised alarms within the company, warning that users could develop unhealthy emotional dependence on the chatbot and that the new age estimation feature was imperfect — and therefore likely to allow minors to access the feature — according to a new report from The Wall Street Journal. Per the report, some 12% of the time, the age estimation feature mistakenly classified minors as adults.

OpenAI’s council of mental health experts were “furious” and unanimous in their opposition to the plans to move forward with the adult mode feature after they were told about the decision in January, with concerns about creating a “sexy suicide coach.”

Earlier this month, the company said it would delay the new feature to focus on other products.

That decision raised alarms within the company, warning that users could develop unhealthy emotional dependence on the chatbot and that the new age estimation feature was imperfect — and therefore likely to allow minors to access the feature — according to a new report from The Wall Street Journal. Per the report, some 12% of the time, the age estimation feature mistakenly classified minors as adults.

OpenAI’s council of mental health experts were “furious” and unanimous in their opposition to the plans to move forward with the adult mode feature after they were told about the decision in January, with concerns about creating a “sexy suicide coach.”

Earlier this month, the company said it would delay the new feature to focus on other products.

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