Apple

People are rushing to buy Apple’s iPhone 17, but it’s probably not because of the iPhone 17

More people went to Apple’s website when preorders for the new iPhone began than have since 2022.

9/19/25 8:19AM

Apple’s iPhone 17 went on sale today and it looks like it might be a relative hit. That might not have much to do with the iPhone 17 itself.

More people turned up for Apple’s online iPhone 17 event earlier this month than have since 2022, according to data shared with Sherwood News by digital market intelligence company Similarweb. The same goes for traffic a few days later, when the phone became available for preorder, suggesting more people might be buying a new iPhone during the preorder period than have in three years.

At the event, Apple unveiled a new slimmer iPhone Air as well as a basic iPhone and an iPhone Pro with faster chips, along with better cameras and larger displays. Apple didn’t mention much about AI, but Apple’s rollout of AI has been spotty at best.

However, people don’t really buy new iPhones because of new features or incremental hardware improvements. Instead, the main driver of iPhone upgrades is because someone’s old phone is obsolete or broken or its battery just doesn’t last as long as it used to.

And 2025 happens to be a big year for older iPhones. That’s because during the early years of the pandemic, Apple experienced a “supercycle” of iPhone upgrades as people trapped at home with extra cash shelled out for new tech.

2020 and 2021 also coincided with natural upgrade cycles, as many had been holding on to their previous iPhones like the iPhone 6 for years at that point. Some had been waiting for a 5G phone as well, which Apple rolled out in 2020, so it was as good a time as any for a new phone.

Here we are, four or five years later, and the people who upgraded in 2020 and 2021 are likely dealing with shorter battery life, smashed screens, and all the other annoyances of old phones.

Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives recently estimated that “315 million iPhone users of 1.5 billion users worldwide have not upgraded their phones in over 4 years speaking to an upgrade opportunity on the horizon for Cupertino with China front and center.”

That’s good for Apple, but it doesn’t mean it’s because of anything Apple in particular has done.

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Jon Keegan3h

Microsoft pledges $8 billion for data centers, cloud computing in UAE

Microsoft announced another large AI-related investment in the United Arab Emirates today, pledging $7.9 billion for data centers and cloud computing.

The deal adds to the $7.3 billion it has already poured into the Gulf state, including a $1.5 billion equity stake in G24, the country’s sovereign AI company.

Microsoft President Brad Smith said in a post on X:

“This reflects a shared vision for AI innovation, economic growth, and ensuring that the benefits of AI are diffused broadly. Microsoft is committed to the future of the UAE and the strong ties between our two nations.”

Microsoft had previously been approved by the Biden administration to send the equivalent of 21,500 of Nvidia’s less powerful A100 GPUs. The Trump administration, which has made a big push for investments in the UAE since President Trump’s visit in May, recently approved shipments of several billion dollars’ worth of Nvidia chips to the nation.

The new deal involves the equivalent of 60,400 A100 GPUs, which include some of the state-of-the-art GB300 GPUs.

Microsoft Vows to Spend $8 Billion in UAE Through 2029 on Cloud, Chips

Microsoft President Brad Smith said in a post on X:

“This reflects a shared vision for AI innovation, economic growth, and ensuring that the benefits of AI are diffused broadly. Microsoft is committed to the future of the UAE and the strong ties between our two nations.”

The new deal involves the equivalent of 60,400 A100 GPUs, which include some of the state-of-the-art GB300 GPUs.

Rani Molla5h

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.

Rani Molla

Phoning it In

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.

Rani Molla & Jon Keegan6h

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.”

In the wake of this news, Wedbush analyst Dan Ives bumped up his price target on the e-commerce and cloud giant to $340 from $330, writing that this deal “is a continued move in the right direction for Amazon as they broaden AI services.”

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.”

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.”

Rani Molla7h

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

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