tech

J. Edward Moreno12/18/24

Micron tanks after reporting grim outlook

Micron Technology is down more than 12% after-hours on Wednesday after the Idaho-based chipmaker reported weaker-than-expected earnings and a grim forecast for next year.

Micron hit revenue estimates at $8.71 billion and slightly exceeded earnings-per-share projections of $1.76 by $0.03. But that’s the past, and what’s worrisome for investors is the future: the company significantly reduced its outlook for the first quarter of next year amid sluggish demand for the chips it makes, which are used for personal computers and smartphones. Outside of AI, the semiconductor sales are far from booming.

Micron said it expects to report up to $1.53 per share in the first quarter of next year, compared to analysts’ expectation of $1.91. It also said it expects to report revenue of up to $8.1 billion, compared to analysts’ estimate of up to $9.50 billion, according to data compiled by Factset.

That news spooked investors, sending the stock price down by nearly 20% in the after-hours session. Prior to reporting earnings, Micron ended the trading day up more than 26% this year.

This comes as some of Micron’s peers who are more exposed to the artificial-intelligence market, like Nvidia and Broadcom, are consistently meeting Wall Street’s expectations.

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Prediction markets think Tesla investors will approve CEO Elon Musk’s $1 trillion pay package on Thursday

Polymarket users are highly convinced that Tesla investors will approve CEO Elon Musk’s $1 trillion pay package later this week, with the market-implied likelihood on the event contract at one point stretching above 97% today, though it’s since come down to around 94%.

Of course, even if investors approve his 2025 CEO Performance Award at the November 6 shareholder meeting, that doesn’t necessarily mean Musk will get the full payout. The deal is performance-based and requires Musk and Tesla to hit a number of lofty goals over the next decade, including:

Boosting the company’s market cap to $8.5 trillion from today’s $1.46 trillion.
Delivering 1 million AI robots (it has so far delivered none).
Having 1 million robotaxis in commercial operation (there are currently about 30 in Austin without a Tesla employee in the driver’s seat).

Tesla’s board and Musk have been loudly campaigning for the pay package’s approval. Board Chair Robyn Denholm wrote in an investor letter last week that it’s integral to keeping Musk. Musk himself took over the company’s earnings call last month to argue that the 29% voting control that’s part of the pay package would be integral to guiding Tesla’s development of AI robots.

“If we build this robot army, do I have at least a strong influence over that robot army?” Musk said.

Event contracts are offered through Robinhood Derivatives, LLC — probabilities referenced or sourced from KalshiEx LLC or ForecastEx LLC.

Meta still wants to have its iPhone moment

More than a decade after Meta’s phone flop, it’s still trying to get in on hardware.

A masked man holding a light bulb

tech

Rani Molla & Jon Keegan56m

OpenAI inks $38 billion deal with Amazon for compute

Amazon managed to pull off its monster quarter without any of those juicy OpenAI deals on its books that many of its competitors had. But now it too has one. The company’s stock, which vaulted on its earnings report last week, jumped 5% in early trading.

The ChatGPT maker has signed a $38 billion multiyear deal with Amazon Web Services to use its compute and reduce its reliance on Microsoft.

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy hinted at the as yet announced deal on the company’s earnings call last week when he described the company’s massive backlog of AWS business:

“Backlog grew to $200 billion by Q3 quarter end, and doesn’t include several unannounced new deals in October, which together are more than our total deal volume for all of Q3. AWS is gaining momentum.”

The deal notes that the agreement calls for “hundreds of thousands of state-of-the-art Nvidia GPUs.” Notably, this deal does not appear to use Amazon’s Trainium chips, which it has been pushing as part of its massive Project Rainier. The initiative will run 500,000 of the custom chips.

In a press release announcing the deal, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said:

“Scaling frontier AI requires massive, reliable compute. Our partnership with AWS strengthens the broad compute ecosystem that will power this next era and bring advanced AI to everyone.”

In a post on X, Jassy said the deal takes effect right away:

“OpenAI will start using AWS’s infrastructure immediately and we expect to have all of the capacity deployed before end of next year-- with the ability to expand in 2027 and beyond.”

OpenAI signs $38 billion compute deal with Amazon, partnering with cloud leader for first time

OpenAI signs $38 billion compute deal with Amazon, partnering with cloud leader for first time

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy hinted at the as yet announced deal on the company’s earnings call last week when he described the company’s massive backlog of AWS business:

“Backlog grew to $200 billion by Q3 quarter end, and doesn’t include several unannounced new deals in October, which together are more than our total deal volume for all of Q3. AWS is gaining momentum.”

The deal notes that the agreement calls for “hundreds of thousands of state-of-the-art Nvidia GPUs.” Notably, this deal does not appear to use Amazon’s Trainium chips, which it has been pushing as part of its massive Project Rainier. The initiative will run 500,000 of the custom chips.

In a press release announcing the deal, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said:

“Scaling frontier AI requires massive, reliable compute. Our partnership with AWS strengthens the broad compute ecosystem that will power this next era and bring advanced AI to everyone.”

In a post on X, Jassy said the deal takes effect right away:

“OpenAI will start using AWS’s infrastructure immediately and we expect to have all of the capacity deployed before end of next year-- with the ability to expand in 2027 and beyond.”

tech

Tesla sales fell in several European countries in October, including an 89% drop in Sweden

On the heels of Tesla’s record delivery quarter, early data from Europe suggests the bad news that has plagued the EV maker on the continent for much of the year is continuing. Tesla sales fell drastically in October in Sweden, Denmark, and Norway, according to Reuters, while rising slightly in France compared with a year earlier.

Tesla continues to face political backlash in Europe for CEO Elon Musk’s involvement in far-right political campaigns there, as well as from steep competition from rivals like BYD and legacy European brands making the switch to EVs.

Of course, sales in what Musk has called Tesla’s “weakest market” weren’t very robust to begin with. In Sweden, for example, Tesla sales fell nearly 90% to just 133 vehicles, “lagging not just mainstream brands but also luxury German automaker Porsche,” Reuters said.

Tesla sales plunge again in some European markets in October

Tesla sales plunge again in some European markets in October

Tesla continues to face political backlash in Europe for CEO Elon Musk’s involvement in far-right political campaigns there, as well as from steep competition from rivals like BYD and legacy European brands making the switch to EVs.

Of course, sales in what Musk has called Tesla’s “weakest market” weren’t very robust to begin with. In Sweden, for example, Tesla sales fell nearly 90% to just 133 vehicles, “lagging not just mainstream brands but also luxury German automaker Porsche,” Reuters said.

tech

Rani Molla & Jon Keegan10/31/25

Amazon closes at all-time high

Fresh off strong earnings Thursday, Amazon saw its stock price end the week at a record closing high of $244.22.

The stock is up 10% so far this year.

The e-commerce and cloud giant beat analysts’ revenue and earnings, and its massive gain was responsible for more than all of the positive return delivered by the SPDR S&P 500 ETF on Friday.

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