tiMicro
Pro: BTIG tech warning
6 h ago
Investors should use a potential rebound in semiconductor stocks to reduce exposure ahead of what is likely to be a "longer drawn out decline" that could stretch into 2027, according to BTIG. In a research report published Sunday, the firm highlighted mounting doubts around artificial intelligence sector and weakness beyond the broader market's surface. “There are certainly more doubts creeping in about the AI complex of late,” BTIG's, managing director and chief market technician at BTIG, wrote in the note. “While those may prove to just be smoke, history suggests where there’s smoke there’s often fire.” The Philadelphia semiconductor index, or SOX, lost 11.4% last week, clocking its worst weekly decline since April 2025. Meanwhile, the iShares semiconductor ETF (SOXX) has logged nine consecutive daily losses. SOXX 3M mountain SOXX chart Krinsky warns that while a relief rally can be expected, there is limited assurance that such gains would last, according to historical data. Following instances of weekly SOX losses of at least 10%, the index rose the next week 43% of the time, with an average return of +1.7% and median return of -1.7%. In three weeks, returns were positive in only 60% of cases. BTIG also questioned whether investors should take comfort in the S & P 500's relative resilience. Since June 1, nine of its 11 sectors have experienced declines of at least 9% from their respective peaks, while the index’s maximum drawdown was 5%. For semiconductor investors looking to reduce exposure ahead of a potential decline, BTIG identified roughly $490 as a key support level for SOXX. A break below that could trigger a slide toward its 200-day moving average near $468. Even if buyers step in, BTIG's broader assessment remains bearish. “Should we get a counter-trend rally, that’s likely an opportunity to reduce exposure.”
Musk pledges to give ‘every kid in America’ one of his SpaceX shares
6 h ago
Elon Musk claims he will give one of his SpaceX shares to “every kid in America” in 2027, which would result in a gift worth more than $10 billion based on the current $146 share price of his combination spaceflight and AI company. That’s roughly 1% of his $1 trillion net worth. It’s not clear how Musk plans to do this, though he said in a separate post that he wants to give the shares “directly to the public,” and that this will be the “first of many” shares he’ll donate. President Donald Trump, who Musk spent around $300 million to help elect, has set up bank accounts for children through the Treasury, called Trump Accounts, that can accept stock donations from wealthy donors. Musk did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Musk’s post came just a few hours after Anthropic promised to put 5% of its shares into a new “public benefit fund,” which it intends to use to make “large donations to traditional nonprofits or direct distributions to specific populations” after its upcoming IPO. On Sunday afternoon, Musk replied directly to Anthropic’s post on X about its new fund, suggesting the company should give “directly to the public” instead. “This is what I will be doing,” he wrote in another reply four hours later. Then, overnight, he announced his plans to donate SpaceX stock. There are currently more than 70 million children under the age of 18 in the United States, according to the Federal Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics. Musk owns around 849 million Class A common shares of SpaceX, and more than 5.5 billion Class B supervoting shares. He stands to earn many more. Musk’s philanthropic giving to date has been almost exclusively done through his own Musk Foundation. Despite his negative opinions about philanthropy, it’s the fifth-largest private charitable foundation in the U.S. A recent review by The Economist showed that a majority of the total money laid out by the Musk Foundation over the years has gone to entities tied to Musk in some way. Nearly 60% has gone to another charity, called The Foundation, run by his money manager, Jared Birchall.
Aixtron’s Q3 orders and operating profitability exceed market expectations
6 h ago
News: Suppliers 19 October 2026 Aixtron’s Q3 orders and operating profitability exceed market expectations Deposition equipment maker Aixtron SE of Herzogenrath, near Aachen, Germany says that its preliminary results for third-quarter 2026 show that order intake, operating result (EBIT) and EBIT margin significantly exceed current market expectations. Preliminary revenue in Q3/2026 is about €184m (up from Q3/2025 €119.6m), well within the forecast range of €180m±€20m. Preliminary operating profitability exceeded market expectations, in particular due to a favorable product mix. Q3/2026 gross profit reached about €87m, corresponding to a gross margin of 48% (up from €46.4m and 39% in Q3/2025 a year ago). Preliminary operating result (EBIT) is about €57m, with an EBIT margin of 31% (up from €15.4m and 13% in Q3/2025). The guidance for full-year fiscal 2026 remains unchanged. Preliminary order intake is about €275m, more than doubling from €124m in Q3/2025 a year ago. This was significantly above the median analyst estimate of €214.6m based on the company’s current consensus, and also well above Q2/2026’s €214.5m. “Our order intake continues to be driven by strong demand for equipment for laser applications in AI data-center communications,” notes CEO Dr Felix Grawert. “At the same time, a favorable product mix contributed to profitability significantly above market expectations,” he adds. “The high order intake clearly strengthens our business prospects for 2027.” The full quarterly statement for third-quarter 2026, including the results for the first nine months of 2026, will be issued as scheduled on 29 October. See related items: Aixtron’s revenue almost doubles in Q2/2026, driven by opto boom Aixtron’s Q3 revenue and margin impacted by volume shifts into Q4 Tags: Aixtron Visit: https://fsi.institute.ufl.edu/industry-affiliates/ Visit: www.aixtron.com
VergeIO Releases VergeOS 26.2
6 h ago
Caeves Technology, Inc. announced that Caeves Context LAKE will be generally available on October 20, 2026.Part of the Caeves AI Data Platform, Context LAKE now extends the platform beyond Microsoft Azure to any public, private, or sovereign cloud, as well as on-premises datacenter environments. Context LAKE connects to enterprise data where it already lives and turns the information within it into trusted, governed context for AI – making it accessible, searchable and AI-ready. Source data remains in place, with no migration required; existing security, governance and access controls remain enforced, and answers remain traceable to their source. AI-ready data, without moving the data Enterprise data is distributed across file shares, object storage, Microsoft SharePoint, and more. Bringing that data to AI can require copying or duplicating it into another platform, while direct retrieval from large repositories can require assistants to process more information than necessary. Both approaches can introduce challenges around data sovereignty, security, governance, performance, and infrastructure cost. Context LAKE takes a unique approach. It runs as an intelligence layer inside the customer’s own environment, indexes data in place, contextualizes and enriches the information within it, and enforces the permissions those files already carry. It then serves that trusted context through MCP to Microsoft Copilot, Claude, ChatGPT, custom agents and private AI – including in fully air-gapped environments. Customers keep full control over where data resides, which assistants can reach it and what those assistants are allowed to see. Click to enlarge “Enterprises should not have to choose between the AI they want to use and the place their data has to stay,” said Jaap van Duijvenbode, co-founder and VP, product strategy & customer experience, Caeves. “Context LAKE extends any data source, on any cloud, to any AI assistant or agentic workflow. That matters most for sovereign cloud and AI use cases, where data cannot leave a defined boundary. Organizations shape their own data for AI readiness on their own terms, securely transforming enterprise data into accessible, searchable and AI-ready assets while reducing costs and extensive AI investments.” Key capabilities Connect & discover data in place Connect to enterprise data across file shares, object storage, SharePoint and OneDrive, wherever it resides, and discover what exists, where it lives, who owns it and how it is being used Index, contextualize & enrich Turn enterprise data into searchable, AI-ready assets through indexing, contextualization and enrichment with metadata, entities and relationships Secure, classify & govern Preserve and enforce existing permissions, classify sensitive information, apply redaction where required, and maintain an auditable record of AI access and retrieval Connect to any AI assistant Serve trusted enterprise context to Copilot, ChatGPT, Claude and other assistants and agents through MCP, with APIs and other interfaces supporting additional workflows Optimize AI economics Provide AI the relevant information and sources instead of requiring it to process large volumes of raw content, reducing token consumption by up to 47x in testing “Context LAKE layers data discovery, indexing, contextualization and enrichment on top of the storage customers have already invested in, with redaction and classification applied before any assistant sees a result,” said Kirk Ryan, director of AI innovation, Caeves. “Instead of an assistant opening file after file and paying for every token it reads, it asks once and gets back the right passages with their sources. In our testing, that cut the AI tokens needed per answer by up to 47x, and associated AI token costs with it.” Click to enlarge Part of the Caeves AI Data Platform Context LAKE extends the capabilities introduced in Caeves Intelligent Deep Storage and Caeves Copilot Connector with a focus on enterprise scale, speed and deployment beyond Microsoft Azure. Organizations can connect existing data in place with Context LAKE or modernize file data to Azure Blob Storage with Intelligent Deep Storage, reducing storage costs by up to 70%, and extend it to any AI assistant from there. Availability Caeves Context LAKE will be generally available on October 20, 2026 as an annual or multi-year software subscription license for any deployment: on-premises datacenters, private and sovereign clouds, and public clouds. For Microsoft customers, Context LAKE will be available in the Microsoft Marketplace, supporting rapid deployment as a cloud-native application in the customer’s own Azure subscription. Marketplace availability for additional cloud providers will follow soon after launch.
No agenda, no rush, no leaving San Francisco: Benchmark’s partners on investing in a frenzied market
14 h ago
The players sometimes change. I sat down with four of Benchmark’s partners three years ago, and three of those individuals are no longer with the firm. The capital commitments have changed, too. This summer, Benchmark announced $2 billion across two funds, marking only the second time in its 31-year history that it has veered from raising a far smaller vehicle. But at this week’s TechCrunch Disrupt, the venture firm’s five partners convincingly portrayed a close-knit team that’s not about to put the pedal to the metal, even as many of their rivals do exactly that. The world may be speeding up, but they’re investing at the pace Benchmark always has: just two or three new bets per year per partner. The world is drowning in information, yet their Monday partner meetings still have no agenda. And while economic indicators point to trouble ahead, they don’t seem too bothered, seeing many of the warning signs as products of X-fueled hysteria. Here’s what Benchmark’s five general partners — gathered together on our stage — had to say at the show. Some of the comments below have been edited for length and clarity; you can watch the full interview at the end of the article. Benchmark has evolved in some ways, including a bigger core fund and a new growth fund. How do you think about adapting without losing what makes you Benchmark? Peter Fenton: The craft that hasn’t changed is the core fund: working closely with founders at the beginning. It’s usually a 10-to-15-year commitment, [working] shoulder to shoulder, and that doesn’t scale. There’s also been inflation. We held the core fund at $500 million for 20 years, and it has just inflated to be consistent with the existing economy, which we hadn’t done and that was probably a tactical error on our part. [As for the growth fund] it’s an expansion of our mandate. In some ways, we get permission from the ecosystem to do more than just the core early-stage business. [Not having this previously] was a fork in our eye. A number of opportunities that came to Benchmark would have returned somewhere between 10 and 1,000x to Benchmark, and we were constricted by our early-stage focus. Are you thinking to make handful of bets with that $1.25 billion growth fund? Fenton: We all have different answers, which is the beauty of a partnership. I’d love for us to have, as that great J.P. Morgan paper puts it, the agony and ecstasy of a concentrated portfolio. If the fund is successful, one or two investments will generate 90% of the returns. So I think it’s four to six, maybe seven to eight. Ev, you joined Benchmark late last year. You’ve worked at Founders Fund, Bond, and Kleiner Perkins. How does Benchmark differ? Ev Randall: Every firm is ultimately a collection of the people within the firm and how they work together. Some are very hierarchical, with a 50- or 60-person investment team and investment processes that are federated into product groups. And then you have small partnerships. Very early in my career, I was drawn to small partnerships because they allow a higher level of throughput and fidelity in your conversations, where you don’t feel like you’re making decisions through some Byzantine corporate structure. You’re going out on the field together, like a sports team. And then the other piece is: You have to find your people, You have to find people who you not only like but admire. With Benchmark, with the current crop of GPs, it was obvious that everyone liked each other and got along, but it went deeper than that. It’s a group that admires each other and learns from each other. That mix of attributes is very rare, and when I saw it, I immediately wanted to join, and I think Jack felt the same way also as a newcomer. Jack, you joined in February, but it was just a year ago that you raised a second, $275 million fund for your own firm in what you told the Wall Street Journal took one week. You have a hugely popular podcast. Why join Benchmark? Jack Altman: It’s funny. I did the podcast with these guys at the start of this year, and during that podcast, obviously we talked about the commitment to being a small fund, but more than that, what I heard was that they want to be the first people who founders call, they want to be concentrated, and they just care. So much in this industry gets tied up in money and status, and what I felt from the Benchmark team then, and ten times more as I’ve gotten to know them so well, is it’s a group that really cares about founders and helping companies. And I did enjoy being an individual investor. . .but in a market this crazy, I don’t know how I’d feel, figuring it out on my own. Having a group of people who are so smart and focused and driven to learn it with and from has been awesome. There’s no better place to learn. I’m told you meet on Mondays with no agenda. Chethan Puttagunta: Jack tried to make an agenda. [Laughs.] Altman: I’ve got an agenda for next Monday. Eric Vishria: It’s weirdly arbitrary, honestly. It’s an ongoing conversation. In a time of rapid change, you’re trying to figure out what’s becoming possible that wasn’t possible six months ago, and who’s bending light. We talk about what companies we’re meeting, what piqued our interest and why, what we’re seeing in board meetings. You can try to systematize it, but one of the beauties of five people is you don’t have to. It’s a decades-long conversation that only works if you’re small and actually enjoy spending time together. After this session, we’re having dinner with one of the very few entrepreneurs who has built a multi-hundred-billion-dollar company, someone we’re not invested in, just to stretch our thinking. Puttagunta: Part of not having an agenda is you need space to be reactive. If a founder needs help landing an executive or a strategic partnership, the five of us can be at their disposal. You’re an equal partnership. Can one person put the kibosh on a deal? Puttagunta: Nobody knows. We don’t have rules around it. Altman: I actually don’t know. I was waiting to see what someone else [said]. It’s never happened? Altman: Because the firm is structured around a low volume of deals, you don’t actually want to have all of this rigor. If we invested in 100 or 200 companies a year, you’d want a CRM and a formal voting process. Because it’s so rare, the lack of structure is a huge asset. Fenton: One of the differentiating aspects of our brand is we’re not so cocksure to come in and say ‘winner’ or ‘loser.’ It’s not Shark Tank. We sort of feel awe, for lack of a better term, at all the possibilities . . . The occasional case where someone comes in who’s polarizing — the entrepreneurs feel that. If someone in the room doesn’t like you, we’re not a great partner. Companies are growing faster than ever. I’d think it’s easier to feel you’re missing out on opportunities if you don’t invest with greater frequency. Have you picked up the pace? Puttagunta: I think the pace is consistent. I think part of the reality of venture capital in our business is that we are not going to be part of every successful company, and that’s okay. There are companies that we identify, we find that the entrepreneur has some great strength, and we want to amplify that strength. And it’s our job to find a way to work with that person. It kind of doesn’t matter how much capital they want to raise, or what structure, or where they are. You just have to work through all that stuff. One thing that founders are interested in as a trend is VCs backing competing companies. Has that VC-founder pact changed because companies are growing so quickly and expanding into one another’s territory? Vishria: One of the things we have an ethos around is, we are making a commitment to an entrepreneur, and through that commitment, we’re saying we’re going to work with you in this thing, and whatever that thing is, and we are working closely enough where it matters, and it should matter to them, and as it matters to us. The harsh reality of this world is every company is evolving very quickly, and so you do have companies that will naturally evolve from one thing to another, or pivot or change, and you are going to get conflicts. That’s just the reality of the of the kind of current dynamic. . . Of course, we’re maintaining confidentiality and doing those things and fortunate to not end up in in that type of insane direct conflict [as happened recently with rival companies Factory and Cognition]. . . that commitment of exclusivity in that area is really important. But things are evolving. There’s no doubt about that. Puttagunta: And I think people are ultra ambitious in this AI era. As the cost of coding new products effectively goes to zero, founders see a surface area and they want to attack the surface area, and so I think it’s probably going to happen more, where you start to run into each other. But there’s a way to be there’s a way to maintain that relationship and be respectful. Jack, have you made an investment for Benchmark yet, and if so, did you feel a lot of pressure with that first deal? Altman: I have, a few, and some are recent, so not all are disclosed. My background was software, but since joining, I’ve done chips, robotics and infra. Someone asked me when I joined, ‘How was the onboarding?’ And I was like, ‘It was perfect. There was no onboarding.’ Either Chethan or Eric told me early on, ‘Hey, you’re going to feel tight on your first one. Don’t. You’re going to make many investments while you’re here. This whole game includes crazy power laws. The odds of it being your first are low.’ . . . I trusted they understood what my shape was as a person, as an investor, and I was going to just try to stay as consistent to that as I could. It really is a group dynamic on a lot of these. The investments I’ve made, I don’t think we would have won them if I didn’t have my partners. I don’t know that I would have been able to know how to get to a yes without them. Eric, the AI chip company Cerebras was an unusual b
Nasdaq futures gain as investors buy the dip in the AI trade
22 h ago
A trader works at the New York Stock Exchange on July 10, 2026. NYSEStock futures rebounded on Sunday night as traders cautiously dipped a toe back in following last week's rout in shares linked to the artificial intelligence trend.Nasdaq-100 futures added 0.4%. Dow Jones Industrial Average futures ticked 0.2% higher, or 110 points. S&P 500 futures gained 0.2%.Stable oil prices early Sunday also lent the equity market some support.In Asia, Japan's Nikkei 225 lost 1.65%, while the Topix was down 1.12% on Monday. South Korea's Kospi was 1.29% lower, while the small-cap Kosdaq Index fell 0.93%. Australia's S&P/ASX 200 was up 0.37%.The S&P 500 lost nearly 2% last week, its biggest weekly decline since late June. The Nasdaq tumbled 4.5%, snapping a four-week winning streak.Concerns around the health of the AI trade took center stage after CNBC reported, citing sources, that Anthropic's third-quarter revenue totaled $16.8 billion. And while that's up from $11.6 billion in the second quarter, it raised flags among investors about the pace of growth with the AI build-out. Neocloud stock CoreWeave, which uses large amounts of debt to build data centers that it rents out to tech companies, was at the center of those fears. The AI-linked name plummeted 25% last week — its largest one-week drop since November 2025. Investors in the corporate bond market have started to shun CoreWeave, with the company's credit default swaps reaching distress levels. It's not just CoreWeave whose moves in the credit market are concerning. Goldman Sachs traders noted Friday: "AI Credit Spreads and hyperscalers specifically are at the widest levels of the year. The last time spreads were nearly this high, the underlying equities were 15% lower.""The widening across the complex has forced investors to confront what happens as AI spending growth slows. AI Capex has likely peaked and financing, sustainability, and returns on capital have become the debate rather than the next near term earnings revision," they said. "Pessimism is increasing, market breadth is low, and [Friday] we saw the second highest amount of puts traded (right behind June of this year)."Traders were also keeping a wary eye on oil with ship attacks in the Persian Gulf picking up and Ukraine and Russia trading attacks on energy infrastructure. Ukraine hit an oil terminal in St. Petersburg, Russia on Sunday. Longer-dated oil futures have begun to ratchet higher on expectations energy infrastructure disruptions may last well into 2027.On Sunday however, Brent and WTI crude futures were both trading a tad lower.A slew of earnings from major companies such as Meta Platforms and Tesla hit the Street this week with optimism those results will stabilize the market.
Everyone’s watching the Elizabeth Holmes documentary ‘You Can See Everything’
22 h ago
“You Can See Everything” is already a box office sensation, with a $15 million opening weekend (based on Sunday estimates). That’s the second biggest opening weekend ever for a documentary film. The nearly three-hour movie — first revealed last month at a secretive screening at the Telluride Film Festival — is only playing in 855 theaters this weekend. (In contrast, the weekend’s number one movie, “Street Fighter,” is playing in 3,575.) But it had a reported 2,000 sellout screenings, and the reviews are overwhelmingly positive; “You Can See Everything” currently has a score of 99% on both Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic. The story of Elizabeth Holmes’ rise and fall — founding blood-testing startup Theranos, attracting support from many of Silicon Valley’s biggest names, then ultimately being sentenced to 11 years in prison for defrauding investors — has already been told in books, podcasts, TV shows, and other documentaries. But “You Can See Everything”’s filmmakers were given extensive access to Holmes and her family in the month before she went to jail, and the involvement of “The Rehearsal” creator Nathan Fielder — who co-directed the film with Lance Oppenheim — made the whole thing even more intriguing. While I haven’t seen the movie myself, I can at least attest to the difficulty of finding tickets in Manhattan: I spent a good chunk of yesterday trying to find a screening for tonight, and I found exactly one with seats available that weren’t in the front row. (Yes, of course I’m going.) TechCrunch’s Amanda Silberling already got to see it on Thursday. She wrote that the enigmatic Holmes finally seems to have met her match in Fielder, a deadpan comedian who’s arguably just as strange and mysterious as she is. Fielder’s month with Holmes is apparently just the beginning of what sounds like an increasingly surreal, metatextual odyssey. The discussion around “You Can See Everything” may be making it harder for other tech-centric films to break through. Aaron Sorkin’s “Social Network” follow-up “The Social Reckoning” opened to a disappointing $5.5 million last weekend, and has already fallen entirely out of the top 10. And Alex Gibney’s four-hour documentary “Musk” — hampered, perhaps, by resistance from social platforms and a four-hour runtime — made only $306,702 this weekend.
Pro: Meta, Tesla on tap
1 d ago
The earnings season picks up even more steam this week, with investors looking for clues on how companies are doing at a critical time for the stock market. There are 70 S & P 500 companies reporting this week, including Meta's first quarterly results since the launch of viral AI agent Muse and "Magnificent Seven" counterpart Tesla . Netflix also reports after making multiple big organizational changes last week, as does automaker General Motors . Both the S & P 500 and the Nasdaq Composite fell last week as traders rotated out of tech stocks over concerns of mounting debt from the artificial intelligence build-out. Markets are also contending with high inflation and continued geopolitical tensions . Earnings results are still expected to be strong this week for many of the major companies reporting, however. The quarterly earnings season began in earnest last week, with major U.S. banks reporting . Goldman Sachs , Morgan Stanley and Citigroup beat earnings and revenue estimates. Wells Fargo reported mixed results, while JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America fell short on both the top and bottom lines. Overall, the reporting period is off to a strong start. About 45 S & P 500 companies have reported thus far, with 85% of those exceeding earnings estimates, FactSet data shows. All times ET. Tuesday General Motors is set to report earnings before the bell. Management will then hold a conference call at 8:30 a.m. Last quarter: GM raised its 2026 guidance as its North American business drove strong results . This quarter: According to LSEG, analysts expect nearly a 30% jump in earnings per share but flat revenue compared to this time last year. What to watch: Last week, JPMorgan analysts maintained their overweight rating on the stock but lowered their price target amid expectations of a 2027 outlook "likely to present a cautious tone" in part due to affordability concerns. Vehicle sales for the automaker declined by 5.5% this past quarter. What history shows: Data from Bespoke Investment Group shows General Motors beats analyst earnings estimates 89% of the time. Shares have risen after each of the last four earnings releases. Netflix is set to report earnings after the bell, with a call slated for 4:45 p.m. Last quarter: NFLX shares sank more than 7% after in line results as Wall Street closely watched its engagement numbers. This quarter: The streaming giant is expected to post 40% in earnings growth compared to the year-earlier period, according to LSEG data. What to watch: Barclays analyst Kannan Venkateshwar noted last week that, with engagement choices on streaming services becoming more deliberate, many viewers still view Netflix "as a service for library content," despite Originals making up more than 60% of Netflix's titles. "The issue may not be Netflix itself but rather that the world around Netflix has changed and Netflix hasn't really changed enough with it," Venkateshwar wrote. On top of that, Netflix last week announced plans to lay off around 1,000 employees, or 6% of its workforce, and replaced its chief content officer. What history shows: Netflix's stock has struggled after reports in five straight quarters. United Airlines is set to report earnings after the bell, with a conference call on Wednesday at 10:30 a.m. Last quarter: UAL's high fuel costs due to the U.S.-Iran war pressured earnings, with increased jet fuel prices potentially adding $6 billion more to expenses in 2026 than expected. This quarter: Analysts polled by LSEG expect revenue growth of more than 15% — but declining EPS compared to a year earlier. What to watch: Will earnings be able to defy the pressure of still-increasing energy costs? Competitor Delta Air Lines was forced to slash its full-year forecast when it reported earlier this month due to the high fuel prices, despite strong consumer demand. What history shows: United beats analyst expectations 75% of the time, and has done so in every quarter since July 2022. Wednesday AT & T will report earnings before the bell, with a conference call at 8:30 a.m. Last quarter: T rose 3% on better-than-expected earnings despite missing slightly on revenue. This quarter: LSEG data shows analysts expect nearly 11% in earnings growth from the year-earlier period but slower topline growth for the same period at 3.2%. What to watch: Bernstein downgraded T to market perform from outperform after news that SpaceX will acquire a nationwide spectrum portfolio sparked a sell-off of telecom stocks. Investors will look for clues on how the company can contend with the growing competition. What history shows: AT & T only beats bottom line estimates 59% of the time, according to Bespoke. But on average, AT & T's stock is little changed following earnings reports. Meta Platforms will report earnings after the bell and host a conference call at 4:30 p.m. Last quarter: META's cash flow took a big hit , sending shares down 8%. This quarter: Meta's earnings per share are expected to have grown a whopping 460% compared to a year earlier, LSEG data shows. What to watch: Analysts across the board are bullish on Meta after the company released its AI agent Muse Sept. 8. The Magnificent Seven titan's stock has shot up more than 15% since Muse's release. Investors now wonder how that will translate to the company's bottom line. What history shows: Meta beats expectations 88% of the time, Bespoke data shows, but its stock took nearly an 8% hit after its topline miss last quarter. Shares also fell sharply after the company's Q1 2026 and Q3 2025 releases. Tesla is set to report earnings after the bell, with a conference call to follow at 5:30 p.m. Last quarter: TSLA posted weaker-than-expected earnings , with margins coming under pressure and cash flow turning negative. This quarter: According to LSEG, Tesla's revenue and earnings per share are expected to have declined, with a 14.5% drop in earnings and close to a 1% decline in revenue from the year prior. What to watch: Wolfe Research is eyeing a potential merger with SpaceX and Tesla's robotaxi business as potential positive developments for the Elon Musk-led automaker, but says they are estimating earnings below consensus in a "tough quarter for Auto stocks." Tesla's third-quarter delivery numbers declined 2% from the year prior but nevertheless topped estimates, sending the stock surging. What history shows: Tesla has fallen short of analyst earnings estimates in two of the last four quarters and only posts a beat on the topline 58% of the time, per Bespoke. Thursday Procter & Gamble is set to report earnings before the bell, with a call slated for 8:30 a.m. Last quarter: PG's beauty division was its top performer, but the company only reported volume growth in one quarter for the 2026 fiscal year. This quarter: Procter & Gamble is expected to post revenue growth just shy of 2% and a 5.4% decline in earnings, LSEG data shows. What to watch: Citi last week maintained its buy on the personal goods stock and said it has an optimistic outlook on PG heading into earnings. "We expect a closing of the gap vs. consumption in the US in F1Q27 and potential upside in China given the competitive dynamics in diapers, resulting in OSG re-accelerating to ~3%," analyst Filippo Falorni wrote. What history shows: Procter & Gamble beats expectations on earnings 86% of the time and has done so for every quarter since April 2023, Bespoke data shows. American Airlines is slated to report earnings in premarket, with a conference call to follow at 8:30 a.m. Last quarter: AAL cut its full-year earnings outlook once again due to high fuel costs. This quarter: LSEG data shows the airline is expected to post top line growth of 18%. What to watch: American has made a push toward premium over the past quarter as it tries to close its profit gap to rivals United and Delta, adding more first class seats and rolling out redesigned Boeing planes . CEO Robert Isom said at a conference last month that 30% of seats generate half of the airline's revenue . What history shows: The airline exceeds earnings estimates 88% of the time. However, the stock averages a 0.4% decline on earnings days, according to Bespoke.
TechCrunch Mobility: Rivian’s next act
1 d ago
Welcome back to TechCrunch Mobility, your hub for the future of transportation and now, more than ever, the role AI is playing in it. To get this in your inbox, sign up here for free — just click TechCrunch Mobility! As I wrapped my TechCrunch Disrupt interview with Rivian CEO and founder RJ Scaringe, I kept circling back to one question: What does Scaringe want Rivian to become? If you look at Rivian’s moves over the past year, it’s clear that Scaringe wants the company to be much more than an EV maker. But he doesn’t want to stray completely from that mission either. Rivian is far more vertically integrated than it was just a couple of years ago. It has developed its own AI models to power its in-vehicle assistant and is building an end-to-end automated driving stack for its passenger vehicles and future robotaxis through a partnership with Uber. It’s even developing custom silicon, a 5 nm processor in collaboration with Arm and TSMC. And then there is its $5.8 billion joint technology venture with VW Group focused on electric architecture and software. Scaringe’s ambitions extend beyond Rivian as well, although there is always a link back. He created a micromobility skunkworks program that has since spun out into a startup called Also. And he founded an industrial robotics startup called Mind Robotics, which is now 31% owned by Rivian and counts the automaker as a prospective customer. (Scaringe announced onstage that former Ford, Apple, and Tesla executive Doug Field has been hired as president of Mind Robotics.) Scaringe’s aspirations were on display as he talked of not only expanding the joint venture with VW to cover AI and autonomy, but also licensing Rivian’s tech to “many different brands.” So what does Rivian look like at the end of the decade? Certainly not just a maker of electric trucks and SUVs. The term I kept coming back to was “tech supplier.” Hear me out. Rivian is clearing a path toward licensing its electric architecture and software as well as its AI models and autonomy stack. Meanwhile, the Mind Robotics startup it partially owns is building industrial robots to not only be used in Rivian factories, but also sold to other companies. Then there’s the robotaxi business. A successful launch with Uber could open the door to more deals. And Scaringe is already imagining how autonomy could reshape Rivian’s own vehicles. “Where it gets really interesting is then you think beyond R2 and R3 and start to imagine the form factors that you want to build for a personally owned autonomous vehicle. You know, it opens up all kinds of design opportunities. It can create dramatically different experiences,” he said in an interview with TechCrunch. “I’m wildly excited about what the next 10 years look like in transportation because of what this enables us to dream and think about.” Deals! Image Credits:Bryce Durbin Bedrock Robotics, a startup developing autonomous driving tech for construction vehicles, is raising $600 million, Axios reported, citing sources. Dot Ai completed its acquisition of electric vehicle car-sharing business Envoy Technologies in a $65 million all-stock transaction, according to a regulatory filing. Evos, a startup that developed AI agents to automate work for industrial businesses, including freight brokerages, raised $9 million in a pre-seed round co-led by Uncork Capital and Field Ventures. Mana Battery, a Colorado-based startup developing anode-free sodium batteries, raised $10.15 million in a round led by Voyager Ventures. PlusAI, the autonomous trucking developer, and Texas Ventures Acquisition III filed a Form S-4 registration statement with the Securities and Exchange Commission —advancing its previously announced agreement to go public via a merger with a blank-check company. Volvo is leveling up its automated driving system through an expansion of its nearly decade-long partnership with Nvidia. Neither company shared financial terms of the deal. The automaker plans to use a trio of Nvidia products to be able to offer hands-free, point-to-point driving on highways and surface streets. Waabi, a startup developing self-driving trucks, landed a commercial partnership with carrier Warrior Logistics. Under the deal, Waabi’s self-driving trucks will move freight between Dallas and Houston. Notable reads and other tidbits Image Credits:Bryce Durbin Electric vehicle sales in the United States are showing signs of life. Laplace Intelligence, one of 20 startups that competed in TechCrunch’s Startup Battlefield 200, is building automated red-teaming that stress-tests robots and self-driving cars. MIT startup LNK Energies says it has created a way to convert existing heavy-duty trucks from diesel to hydrogen, slashing pollution and costs while shielding operators from price spikes. The Paris Auto Show puts Chinese cars on center stage. Tesla showcased its SpaceX-powered Roadster with a theatrical kickflip stunt. The Roadster used a mix of high-powered fans and thrusters to drive up an inverted ramp, spin around, and stick a landing on the pavement below. CEO Elon Musk claims the vehicle will be on the road by 2028. But will future owners be allowed to legally deploy these maneuvers on public streets? I don’t see how. Waymo is expanding into Canada — specifically, Toronto — after receiving approval to participate in an automated vehicle pilot program. Waymo has also opened up its robotaxi service to everyone, meaning no more waitlists, in San Antonio, San Diego, and Tampa. One more thing … The electric Macan’s roofline is slightly more bulbous than the gas-burning version.Image Credits:Tim De Chant TechCrunch reporter Tim De Chant recently test drove the 2026Porsche Macan Turbo EV. His week with the EV has him questioning what a sports car is supposed to be. Read the full review.
Replit makes OpenAI its default over Anthropic, CEO says
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Replit, the AI coding platform that has become a favorite of startup founders and developers, is no longer working with Anthropic, the company’s CEO and co-founder Amjad Masad said Thursday while onstage at TechCrunch Disrupt. Masad said the decision was made for a number of different reasons, including cost. Replit announced a partnership with OpenAI in August, but there was never any indication that it was no longer partnering with Anthropic. “I think ChatGPT is better now,” Masad said, adding that the company uses an internal benchmark to help assess metrics like performance. “We publish a public benchmark as well, and consistently, Sol and Astra perform better on building vibe-coded applications from scratch. It was a decision based on both cost, partnership, and performance. And for all these reasons, we just felt like they were a better partner for now.” It seems, however, that Anthropic hasn’t been completely cut out of Replit, which sells a cloud-based software development platform where users can develop and deploy apps directly from inside their browser. After Disrupt, Masad clarified that customers can still access Anthropic models on the platform, but that OpenAI’s ChatGPT is now the default. This shift could significantly reduce Replit’s spend with Anthropic since most customers stick with the default rather than selecting a model themselves. Prior to striking a deal with OpenAI, Replit relied on Anthropic’s Claude models to run its platform. That partnership was said to have helped the company grow its revenue significantly, and Masad noted on stage that Replit had been, until recently, a top-five customer of Anthropic’s. “Replit remains model agnostic,” Masad told TechCrunch over the weekend. “Our users can choose Anthropic’s Claude or other supported models…OpenAI is now our preferred partner for powering Replit Agent, based on performance, economics, and the strength of our partnership.” Masad’s comments on stage were rejected by insiders familiar with the partnership between the Anthropic and Replit, however. One person familiar, who asked not to be named, said the partnership was still in place. There is evidence on the company’s website, blog posts, and social media posts that Replit was promoting Anthropic products as recently as a few weeks ago. For instance, a blog post in late September cites Anthropic’s Claude Fable 5 and Claude Fable 5.1 as models running in Replit Agent’s production environment. Around the same time, one of Replit’s product employees posted on X about using Anthropic’s flagship model Opus 5.5 and promoting its capabilities. Masad also shared insights about the company’s growth while onstage at Disrupt, noting that enterprise is starting to provide a larger slice of revenue. “We’re not sharing ARR numbers just yet, but in terms of growth, like, I would say, enterprise was like 2% of revenue last year,” Masad said. “This year, I would say like 15% of our revenue is enterprise contracts, and more than 50% of our revenue is B2B.” Backstage, Masad told TechCrunch that he expects more than half of Replit’s revenue to come from enterprise and government customers in 2027. Masad also commented on the necessity for good AI safety measures. “In the same way that us humans need a certain environment to work — you need a nice office, maybe nice good food in the office, air-conditioning, computer — agents need a habitat for them to exist and do good work,” he said. “So that habitat has good orchestration, good error recovery, good safety and security and sandboxing, good networking, good identity and authorization. And once you figure all of that out, then you can deploy AI safely.” This article was originally published on October 16 at 2:22 pm PT. It has been updated to include more context around Replit’s partnerships with Anthropic and OpenAI. Its title has been updated, as well.
Mark Wahlberg wants to take on the longevity-startup crowd with an affordable gym concept
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Mark Wahlberg has started companies of his own and backed plenty of others. But the gym he’s opening in December, he says, has him more excited than anything he’s done in his entire career. It also goes after a corner of the market where venture money keeps flowing: pricey, diagnostics-heavy wellness. Speaking with us at TechCrunch Disrupt in San Francisco on Thursday, the actor said the first Municipal Gym opens in December. It’s a 32,000-square-foot club outside Las Vegas with blood work, epigenetic testing, recovery gear, compression therapy, cold plunges, and a café that serves up protein muffins, among other things. He’s pitching it as the affordable alternative to the longevity clubs that charge tens of thousands of dollars a year for much the same thing. It’s the second part of a scheme that was, in some ways, first hatched seven years ago with a casual sportswear line. The clothing brand Municipal launched during COVID, which Wahlberg freely volunteered “was not a good idea,” given that clothing was a lousy business to enter in 2020, with retailers from J.Crew to Brooks Brothers going bankrupt. It grew out of what he’d been seeing as a celebrity fitness spokesperson. He’d done collabs with various brands, and other companies kept approaching him to be their brand ambassador, but they all seemed to want the same thing, he said. “Everybody just kind of wanted to sell T-shirts and sneakers. And I was like, well, I want to kind of have a bigger impact on people’s lives as a whole.” By that, he meant what people eat, what supplements they take, how they train, and how they recover. Clothing was just the start. “We figured, okay, we’ll start in the apparel space, and then we’ll build from there.” He says he only takes swings at “things that I’m very passionate about and things that are a direct extension of who I am.” Even without a pandemic, clothing is a brutal business, as we pointed out, citing Lululemon’s repeated quality-control challenges. But Wahlberg didn’t seem fazed, talking instead about why the gym fits his vision. He thought it “always could be great for the brand” in part because it gives people a place to “actually feel and touch the clothes” before they buy. Besides, he continued, how people exercise is “another big part of people’s lives.” Most in the space have been laser-focused on the high end. Fountain Life, the longevity company co-founded by Tony Robbins, raised $18 million last year to expand its centers for wealthy clients, and a full subscription runs $21,500 a year, according to reports. The Estate, a company co-founded by Robbins and hospitality executive Sam Nazarian, is still mapping out plans to charge $35,000 memberships to its wellness centers. Equinox is similarly building a waitlist for a $36,000 longevity add-on that it plans to launch atop a traditional gym membership. Wahlberg says Municipal aims for that same luxury tier but for a lot less. “We have a better price point than our competitors, and we’re going to get far more results,” he said. For $99, he said as an example, members will receive three rounds of blood work and an hour with a doctor to flag what they’re predisposed to. Supplements and hormone therapy are also “right there.” When we asked whether the gyms will double as storefronts for his other products (he owns a supplements brand, for example), he said “kind of.” What he’s really building, he said, is a “health and wellness ecosystem” with “everything there, soup to nuts.” He didn’t put a number on how many gyms he wants, but he called the growth strategy “aggressive,” telling us that “landlords and developers who toured the Las Vegas site have offered “AAA locations at very favorable terms, with great TI” (tenant-improvement allowances that help pay for the build-out). Wahlberg’s last big bet on a gym chain might have scared off someone else. We told him we’d recently watched “Wahl Street,” his reality show, in which an early episode shows him getting deeply involved with the fitness chain F45 in 2019, and that we wanted to warn him about what was coming. “How did you know about the pandemic?” he joked, to laughs from the crowd. He bought into the company, known for its 45-minute classes, at a $450 million valuation. It went public in 2021, then was delisted from the NYSE in 2023 after its stock collapsed. Wahlberg said he learned a lot from the experience. “I think the biggest takeaway was just making sure that I’m involved with people that share the same approach that I do.” He also said he always thought big box was the better model. F45’s classes suit people who are short on time, but he wants members to hang around Municipal for hours. Plenty of gyms run on a “join up but don’t show up” model, he said, adding, “I can’t understand that philosophy.” The name Municipal is very intentional and clearly means a lot to Wahlberg, who grew up poor in Boston, one of nine kids, playing on public basketball courts and golf courses. “You learn a lot on the blacktop,” he said. “You learn to win, to lose, to compete, and hopefully to get back up and do it again.” He has never hidden his rough youth. (He was sentenced to two years for assaults as a teenager and served 45 days.) In fact, earlier in the afternoon on Thursday, surrounded by friends and business associates in a seating area backstage at Disrupt — this is the man who inspired the show “Entourage,” after all — he said he was turned around by two people, including Father Jim Flavin, a Boston-area parish priest who has been in Wahlberg’s life since he was 13. He wants the gyms to carry that same spirit. “It’s a place to work, but have fun and support each other and create community and really challenge people to be better versions of themselves,” he said. It’s personal, he said outright. “I’ve come from next to nothing to being in an amazing position,” Wahlberg said. “I try to constantly remind myself that I can inspire other people growing up in similar situations, especially inner-city kids and at-risk youth, that there is a way to overcome your circumstances if you’re willing to go out there and do the work.” At 55, he added, his goals have changed; while he was once focused on looking good, “I just want to feel good when I wake up in the morning,” he said. “I want to be able to conquer all the things that I have planned for the day.” He also said his plate is exceedingly full right now, between the gym, a film role as Pete Rose, and his daughter’s equestrian career. He’s so eager for the gym to open, he said, that visiting the construction site feels like “literally watching paint dry.” Indeed, asked if he was open to taking on new ventures, he shrugged. “I’m not out there hunting, looking for the next thing for sure.” But he wouldn’t rule it out, he added quickly. “If something amazing were to come along, obviously I wouldn’t turn it down.”
Veritas expands its anti-counterfeit chip to jewelry, trophies, and fragrance bottles
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Counterfeits of luxury goods are a major problem for fashion houses. Counterfeiters are getting better at replicating brands’ marks and passing off dupes, known as “superfakes,” as genuine items. A startup called Veritas wants to tackle the problem with its own chip that verifies goods. Veritas was founded by Luci Holland, a former Tesla technical product manager who also has a background in design and art. Its chip is built to be easily inserted into products without damaging them. Brands can use it to verify whether a product is the real deal, and customers can show a certificate of ownership through the company’s app. Holland said other approaches are easier to defeat, because a digital record can be reproduced through a copied QR code or static NFC link. “Our approach combines secure, authenticated chip responses with integration into the product itself. Our chip generates a secure response with each tap and includes a tamper-detection wire. We make the connection between the object and its digital identity part of the proof,” Holland said. The Veritas founder told TechCrunch over email that the company has just introduced the second version of its chip, which works on metal surfaces and can be scanned through glass. “The next-generation chip is ready for production and supports a broader range of applications, including jewelry, trophies, hard-surface products, and glass objects such as fragrance bottles,” Holland said. “Alongside our garment integrations, this gives brands more ways to incorporate authentication directly into their products.” This week, the startup announced a partnership with ATHLOS, a women’s track-and-field competition founded by Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian, who is also an investor in Veritas. As part of the partnership, all 18 championship crowns will include Veritas’ chips so they can be verified. Image Credits:Veritas x ATHLOS The company also embedded a chip into a pair of LeBron James’ first Nike shoes, reimagined by artist Adam Port. Tapping a phone to the shoe brings up its history and story. The company has so far raised $1.75 million in pre-seed funding led by Ohanian’s venture firm Seven Seven Six, with participation from DoorDash co-founder Stanley Tang; Gloria Zhu, co-founder of skincare brand Reys; and former TechCrunch editor Josh Constine. Since its February fundraise, the company has shipped an iOS app for consumers and a brand portal that lets companies manage product records and build owner experiences. Through the app and the portal, brands can offer experiences such as clubs, event check-ins, and segmented early access to product drops. Veritas competed in this year’s TechCrunch Disrupt Startup Battlefield, which ran Tuesday through Thursday. A winner was announced Thursday afternoon.
Pro: Steps for retirees
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A runup in Treasury yields lately has retirees facing price declines from their bonds as well as in some of their favorite dividend-paying sectors. In the past month, the real estate and financial sectors have fallen more than 2%, while utilities are hanging in with a 1% rise and health care has risen 4%. The Vanguard High Dividend Yield Index (VYM) has fallen 1% in the past month, too. In the same period, the 10-year Treasury yield has topped 5.3%, the highest level in 24 years. The benchmark yield cooled on Thursday, trading near 5.085% as investors bid up safety assets. Still, the recent bout of volatility is enough to worry investors who are drawing down a stream of income from their retirement savings. "With fluctuations in the bond markets, I get calls from clients I don't normally hear from," said Jessica Ness, CFP and financial advisor at CJM Wealth Advisers in Falls Church, Virginia. "Any time the bond market is in turmoil, it raises clients' eyebrows," Ness added. "But it's been wonderful to say, 'no we don't need to change your strategy' or 'we don't need to adjust because your diversified portfolios have held up.'" You may not need to throw out your playbook if you're drawing down income in retirement and facing market tumult, but a few steps can help you bolster your plan. Set aside sufficient cash The best way to avoid eroding your savings during a big sell-off is to have enough cash in reserves to manage your expenses, and required withdrawals, for a six to 12-month period. Today's higher yields can also reward you with interest income from your cash without subjecting you to excessive interest rate risk. Fixed income assets with short maturities have less price sensitivity to interest rate swings; that's known as duration. The Crane 100 Money Fund Index has an annualized 7-day yield of 3.7%. Money market funds promise stability and offer interest. The Vanguard Federal Money Market Fund (VMFXX) yields 3.81% and has an expense ratio of 0.11%, while the Fidelity Money Market Fund (SPRXX) yields 3.57% and carries an expense ratio of 0.42%. For investors willing to squeeze a little more yield without ramping up duration, short-term bond funds might do the trick. The iShares Ultra Short Duration Bond Active ETF (ICSH) has an expense ratio of 0.08% and a 30-day SEC yield of 4.38%, while the Vanguard Ultra-Short Bond ETF (VUSB) has an expense ratio of 0.1% and a 30-day SEC yield of 4.78%. "We always believe in the prudence of having some cash tiering, some short-term liquidity buckets so you own an allocation that will be stable, defensive and liquid, and that you can draw down from in the most volatile markets," said Rebecca Venter, senior fixed income client portfolio manager at Vanguard. "The short-term bond space provides meaningful yield with less interest rate risk so bond portfolios can be more stable through interest rate volatility," she added. Rebalance your portfolio Don't be afraid to add back to some of your asset classes that haven't been doing well and part ways with some of your winners. Rebalancing your portfolio helps you prevent overconcentration in positions that have grown too large, keeping your risk profile in check. "Rebalancing is where the magic happens, that is where we see the opportunities," said Ness. "For us, we're trimming large cap growth; they're the high flyer." She's also been adding to some underperforming asset classes as of late, including small and mid-cap stocks. The Russell 2000 , up more than 10% in 2026, has lagged the market lately and fallen more than 7% in the past three months. The State Street SPDR S & P Midcap 400 (MDY) is off almost 4% in the past three months. Sell losers selectively If you're holding bonds in your taxable brokerage account, the latest runup in yields may have given you an opportunity to sell a few losing positions to offset capital gains realized elsewhere in your portfolio. If your losses exceed capital gains, you can apply as much as $3,000 of the losses to reduce your ordinary income. You can also carry over any unused losses into future years. But investors need to steer clear of violating the wash sale rule. That means if you sell an asset to realize a loss and then buy a "substantially identical" replacement within 30 days before or after the transaction, the IRS may stop you from taking the loss. "This is a great time for [tax loss harvesting on bonds], and I think for clients who are in higher tax brackets, the taxable equivalent yield on municipal bonds is really attractive," said Rafia Hasan, CFP and chief investment officer at Perigon Wealth Management in Chicago. She recommends shying away from bonds with very long duration, instead preferring intermediate duration – somewhere in the range of five to seven years. Hasan noted that while it's a tough market for fixed income, yield is now making up a larger part of total bond returns. "On a go-forward basis, it's a positive for people who are savers and bond investors," she said.
Even Benchmark thinks AI is eroding the venture pact against backing rivals
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For decades, the unwritten rule of venture capital was that a firm doesn’t back two companies that compete head-on. But speaking at TechCrunch Disrupt earlier this week, the partners of Benchmark readily acknowledged that the AI boom is straining that rule. It’s been on the verge of snapping for some time. The towering AI labs OpenAI and Anthropic share dozens of the same investors at this point. Then, at the end of September, Factory, a startup that builds an AI agent to write software, said it was firing board observer and adviser Chris Degnan for “unethical conduct involving Cognition,” its direct rival and the maker of the Devin coding agent. Factory’s CEO alleged Degnan had discussed a job at Cognition while privy to Factory’s board-level discussions. Degnan said he had already resigned and denied sharing anything confidential. Soon after, he announced he was joining Cognition as chief revenue officer. Powerhouse investor Vinod Khosla sided with Degnan on X, blasting Factory’s CEO and calling the company “a struggling second tier competitor.” Khosla Ventures backs both companies. Even Benchmark, a firm whose reputation rests on 10- to 15-year partnerships with founders at the earliest stage, said the old rule can no longer be counted on. Asked at Disrupt whether the pact against backing rivals still holds as portfolio companies expand into each other’s territory, its partners described the conflicts as a matter of necessity, not preference. “The harsh reality of this world is every company is evolving very quickly,” said Eric Vishria. Companies pivot and change, he said, and “you are going to get conflicts, and that’s just the reality of the current dynamic.” Vishria said Benchmark stays committed to each founder and keeps what it learns confidential, and he downplayed how much a VC could pass along anyway: “We are not product or technology experts.” Seemingly referring to the Factory-Cognition dispute, he said Benchmark has been fortunate not to land in “that type of insane direct conflict.” Exclusivity, he said, remains “really important” at the very early stage Benchmark favors. “But things are evolving. There’s no doubt about that.” Chetan Puttagunta said AI is accelerating the problem. As the cost of building software “effectively goes to zero,” he said, founders are “incredibly ambitious.” Because they now see a “surface area” and want to claim all of it, he continued, “[i]t’s probably going to happen more, where you start to run into each other.” He drew a line between a direct competitor at the outset, which he called “an easy answer,” and a portfolio company that expands into another’s turf over time. “That happens,” he said. Peter Fenton called the issue “kryptonite” and the firm’s toughest problem. He described a spectrum of how investors relate to their companies. At one end is the co-founder, who would never work on a competing company. At the other is the public-market stock picker, who can own several rivals because he is merely allocating capital, not shaping any of them. Benchmark sits nearer the co-founder end, Fenton said, and treats transparency as a golden rule. “There shouldn’t be the surprise after the fact.” If a conflict does emerge, a founder should never feel shortchanged, he added. Benchmark isn’t declaring the pact dead. At the same time, when a firm that built its name on loyalty says conflicts are coming, founders might rightly wonder who else will be this candid.
Smartphone shipments shrink 20% in Q3/2026 as memory crisis reshapes competition
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News:Â Markets 16 October 2026 Smartphone shipments shrink 20% in Q3/2026 as memory crisis reshapes competition According to market research firm Omdia’s preliminary estimates, global smartphone shipments fell 20% year-on-year in third-quarter 2026, a sharp acceleration from the 6% decline recorded the previous quarter. Shipments also declined sequentially despite new flagship launches and channel preparations for the year-end festive season. Persistent memory and storage cost pressures have constrained pricing flexibility and prompted vendors to scale back shipments of low-margin devices. Graphic: Global smartphone market shrinks 20% in Q3/2026 to the lowest third-quarter level since 2013 amid cost pressures. The downturn has further polarized the competitive landscape. Samsung and Apple together accounted for 45% of global shipments, up about 8 percentage points from a year earlier. Their relative resilience compared with sharper declines among mass-market-focused competitors indicates that the current downturn is reshaping competitive positions. Samsung retained the top position with a 23% market share, gaining share despite a year-on-year decline in shipments. Its broad product portfolio and established global channel presence helped to cushion the impact of the market downturn, while the August launch of the Galaxy Z Fold8 and Flip8 series supported its premium positioning. Looking ahead, balancing shipment scale with portfolio profitability and premiumization will be increasingly important to sustaining Samsung's competitive position. Apple ranked second with a 22% market share, showing strong resilience despite the wider market downturn. Continued demand for the iPhone 17 family, alongside the September introduction of the iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max, helped to maintain its momentum. The iPhone Duo marks Apple's entry into the foldable smartphone category, expanding its portfolio beyond traditional form factors and creating new opportunities to address evolving consumer needs and capture incremental demand. While AI is not yet a major purchase driver for consumers, Apple Intelligence could play an increasingly important role in differentiating Apple’s user experience and sustaining its long-term ecosystem advantage. Xiaomi maintained third position with 12% market share, followed by OPPO (including realme and OnePlus) at 9%. vivo completed the top five with an 8% share. Rising memory costs are putting pressure on profitability across price segments, with the impact particularly pronounced in more price-sensitive categories. Graphic: Worldwide smartphone shipment market share top vendors Q2/2022 to Q3/2026. These pressures are forcing vendors to reassess the profitability of their entry-level portfolios and make more selective decisions about product positioning, pricing and market coverage. Vendors are prioritizing average selling price (ASP) growth and portfolio optimization to sustain shipment value and protect profitability. “Rising component costs and differing vendor responses are reshaping the competitive landscape, but market share alone does not tell the full story,” says Hayden Hou, principal analyst at Omdia. “As vendors make different trade-offs between shipment scale, revenue and profitability, their performance needs to be assessed beyond unit shipments. More importantly, the strategic decisions made during this downturn could have lasting implications beyond the current cost cycle. Investments in new channel partnerships, device financing capabilities and stronger premium portfolios will help determine which vendors emerge with a more competitive and sustainable business model once cost pressures ease,” he adds. “For vendors competing primarily on affordability, protecting profitability without sacrificing shipment scale has become an increasingly difficult balancing act,” says Lucas Zhong, senior analyst at Omdia. “This pressure is particularly acute in emerging markets, where consumers are more price-sensitive and vendors rely heavily on entry-level devices with already thin profit margins. However, scaling back shipments to protect margins carries long-term risks, particularly for emerging vendors, as losing market presence can weaken brand visibility and channel mindshare, which may take years to rebuild. Rather than withdrawing across the board, vendors need to make more deliberate choices about where to compete, concentrating resources on markets and products that can sustain both profitability and market relevance.” “Looking ahead to the fourth quarter, new flagship launches, promotions and festive demand are unlikely to fully offset persistent supply-side pressures,” adds Lucas. “Vendors will need to combine disciplined inventory management with more effective financing, trade-in and telco partnerships to sustain upgrades without relying on broad discounting. While shipment volumes remain under pressure, rising prices are gradually resetting consumer price expectations, potentially creating greater opportunities for higher-value devices in future replacement cycles. Vendors that can make these products more accessible and demonstrate meaningful improvements in the user experience will be better positioned for the next replacement cycle.” See related items: Smartphone market falls 4% year-on-year in Q2, driven by memory shortage Smartphone shipments grow 1% year-on-year in Q1 to 298.5 million units Smartphone shipments to fall 7% in 2026 amid memory constraints and geopolitical pressures Tags: Smartphone shipments Visit: technology.informa.com
S&P 500 futures are little changed as index heads for losing week
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Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange during morning trading on Oct. 14, 2026 in New York City. Michael M. Santiago | Getty ImagesS&P 500 futures were relatively unchanged on Thursday after the S&P 500 posted its first winning session in four, with investors shaking off the latest sell-off in technology stocks.Futures tied to the broad market average traded just below the flatline, while Nasdaq-100 futures were off 0.3%. Futures linked to the Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 10 points.In Asia, Japan's Nikkei 225 added over 1% while the Topix rose 1.14% on Friday. The Kospi advanced 1.22% at open, and the small-cap Kosdaq gained 1.28%. Australia's benchmark S&P/ASX 200 was 0.83% higher. The three major U.S. averages finished Thursday's session in the green as investors rotated out of key tech names and into other parts of the market. The S&P 500 finished up roughly 0.3%, while the Nasdaq Composite lagged, inching up only about 0.1%. Both snapped a three-day losing streak. The Dow was the leader among the three, jumping more than 500 points, or around 1.1%.A slide in stocks related to the artificial intelligence trade, especially those in the memory chip space, has weighed on the market this week amid jitters about competition from China. Micron Technology, which finished higher Thursday, is on pace for a decline of more than 9% on the week. Others like Seagate Technology and Western Digital are also pacing for a losing week.Investors have also grown concerned that tech companies are borrowing too much for the AI buildout. Neocloud stocks like CoreWeave, which also recovered Thursday from a steep drop in the prior session, is heading for a 15% on the week.Further, Anthropic has told investors that its third-quarter revenue is $16.8 billion . The disclosure comes as traders fixate on growth in the AI space and whether it's strong enough to back up the recent gains in chipmakers. Chip stocks like Nvidia and Broadcom are in the red this week.This week's losses have placed the S&P 500 and Nasdaq in negative territory week to date, as the former has fallen nearly 1% in the period, while the latter has tumbled more than 2%. The Dow, on the other hand, is on track for a roughly 1% increase on the week."One of the real challenges we've had in AI and technology overall for the last six to 12 months is that so much of what's happening is happening in private markets," Jeff Richards, managing partner at Notable Capital, told CNBC's "Closing Bell" on Thursday. He noted that AI-linked companies like Anthropic and OpenAI, among others, going public could help assuage investor concerns."Once we get more of the information out there – analyst coverage, detailed information on core metrics – into the market over the course of '27, I think a lot of those fears will ease," he said.Outside of tech, investors have been grappling with hotter-than-expected inflation data, which has been exacerbated by elevated energy prices in the wake of the U.S.-Iran war. Wholesale inflation this week saw its biggest gain since 2022, while consumer inflation remained well above the Federal Reserve's target of 2%.Investors are now looking ahead to more earnings results due for release before the bell Friday, including Travelers and Citizens Financial.
Pro: Energy takes lead
4 d ago
(See the video above for Todd's complete chart breakdown.) It's hard to believe, but energy — not technology — is not only still leading the sector year-to-date scorecard in 2026, it's building on the lead. Last week, we talked about a Brazilian energy company. I was looking forward to talking technology this week, but we need to stay where the "energy" is. The Energy Select Sector SPDR Fund (XLE) is up 53.3% year to date, more than three times the S & P 500's 15% gain. The Technology Select Sector SPDR Fund (XLK) is still up a strong 36.8%, but look at the shaded box on the right side of the chart. Over the past two weeks, tech rolled over while energy ripped to new highs. Wednesday's September CPI report added fuel. Headline inflation came in at 3.7%, a tenth above expectations, and bond yields pushed higher. That's a headwind for long-duration growth stocks and, in my view, another reason that energy has staying power. I think there's a deeper message that we need to uncover here from the bond market, more than just hot inflation or geopolitical tensions. I split the 10-year Treasury yield into its two pieces: expected inflation and real yields. Only real yields are making new highs while expected inflation remains off the highs. I also overlay crude oil on all three measures. It tracks one far more closely than the others, and that matters for how energy trades from here. There's the crude oil chart itself. Even after this week's Houthi attack on a Saudi Aramco facility, WTI is coiled in a tight triangle between falling resistance in the low 100s and rising support near 90. Whichever way it breaks should set the tone for the whole energy complex. In our latest rebalance of the portfolios, we maintained our significantly overweight allocation to energy. The cleanest play in here, in our view, is in the barrel. It's the refining margins. The diesel crack spread (what refiners earn turning crude into diesel) climbed from about $25 a barrel in January to a peak above $110 in September. It's cooled to around $95, yet the VanEck Oil Refiners ETF is holding near its highs. Marathon Petroleum This is why we re-entered Marathon Petroleum (MPC) in our most recent rebalance and why we remain overweight energy. Marathon has climbed inside a well-defined channel since its 2020 low. At about $477, it sits far above its 200-week moving average near $181. Resistance points to the $600 to $650 area, so there may be room to run. As described in the video, I'm definitely nervous about adding to this name and the energy industry, as they are so extended. But the market is telling us that energy stocks are trading on more than just inflation expectations or geopolitical pressures. There's more to the story. We, as active managers, mean staying with the trade that the market is focused on, with a defined plan in case it unwinds. Marathon reports Q3 results on November 3 before the open. In the full video, I walk through six charts, including: The bond market signal hiding inside Wednesday's CPI sell-off Which bond yield crude oil actually trades with An understanding of how the diesel crack spread is driving the refiners The breakout and breakdown levels I'm watching on WTI Discussion of managing risk on this extended refining trade Todd Gordon is the founder of Inside Edge Capital, LLC. DISCLOSURES: Todd owns PBR and MPC personally and for clients of Inside Edge Capital, LLC. All opinions expressed by the CNBC Pro contributors are solely their opinions and do not reflect the opinions of CNBC, or its parent company or affiliates, and may have been previously disseminated by them on television, radio, internet or another medium. THIS CONTENT IS PROVIDED FOR INFORMATIONAL PURPOSES ONLY AND DOES NOT CONSTITUTE FINANCIAL, INVESTMENT, TAX OR LEGAL ADVICE OR A RECOMMENDATION TO BUY ANY SECURITY OR OTHER FINANCIAL ASSET. THE CONTENT IS GENERAL IN NATURE AND DOES NOT REFLECT ANY INDIVIDUAL'S UNIQUE PERSONAL CIRCUMSTANCES. THE ABOVE CONTENT MIGHT NOT BE SUITABLE FOR YOUR PARTICULAR CIRCUMSTANCES. BEFORE MAKING ANY FINANCIAL DECISIONS, YOU SHOULD STRONGLY CONSIDER SEEKING ADVICE FROM YOUR OWN FINANCIAL OR INVESTMENT ADVISOR. Click here for the full disclaimer.
Flock CEO defends surveillance tech as 'progress' amid backlash
4 d ago
Flock’s founder and CEO Garrett Langley doesn’t think the risks of introducing surveillance technology at scale outweigh the rewards. “If we want to live in a society where, if you commit a crime, you have a higher probability of being held accountable, we shouldn’t pause progress,” Langley said, speaking on stage during a panel at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 in San Francisco on Wednesday. During the interview, the controversial founder of the surveillance maker of license plate cameras and other recording devices deflected hard questions about the criticism Flock now faces — which has since led to cancelled contracts and even layoffs. Instead, Langley tended to respond to questions with anecdotes from conversations with police chiefs and city leaders across the United States, and tales of the supposed numerous crimes Flock has solved, rather than offer tangible solutions to people’s concerns. In doing so, Langley positioned Flock as an advance in technology that was somewhat inevitable. He stressed that if people wanted to live in a better society — that is, one with reduced crime — they would have to offer up their privacy in return. A similar argument about the trade-offs and rewards could be made for AI, which is marketed to the public as vastly improving our lives, automating tedious tasks, and making things more convenient. The flip side is the cost of sharing everything about ourselves with the makers of the AI agents themselves — and the possibility of the destruction of humanity, according to some. It’s no surprise that the AI backlash shares some overlap with Flock. Much like AI, Flock is a technology that some feel has been forced upon the public without their consent. For Langley, this is just the nature of progress, he explained. “Technology, at its core, in its definition, is just doing things better. It’s not doing things perfect,” he said. “Driverless cars, I think, is a fair analogy. Driverless cars, I think, are definitively safer than human drivers. And when there’s one accident, I don’t think the answer is to shut down driverless cars. The answer is to say, ‘Hey, let’s talk about how we prevent more accidents in the future’.” But driverless car makers don’t shrug their shoulders at crashes; the companies pause their fleets and apply fixes. Flock, meanwhile, seems to wrestle as a company with understanding when it’s the company’s responsibility to intervene. From Langley’s answers, it’s clear that the ethics around how Flock should be used is a decision he would much rather leave up to others. “We don’t want to tell city leaders how to do their job,” he noted. “We will provide recommendations, we’ll provide defaults, but we’re going to minimize the number of mandated features, functions, and policies,” he said. CEO: ‘Flock is far from perfect’ Among the many rebuttals to his critics that Langley raised during the interview was the idea that misinformation about Flock had led to some of its customers’ cancellations. For instance, he referenced a time when a customer ended their contract because they believed the devices performed facial recognition. While Flock cameras do not have facial recognition, they do have the ability to detect and track people. Langley also spent a fair amount of time admonishing those who think his technology, or any technology, should be perfect, attributing the quote to some unnamed community leader. “He was describing that, too often as a society we judge technology not on how it compares to the past, but how it compares to perfect. And Flock is far from perfect; I’m far from perfect — I’ve made plenty of mistakes,” Langley said. Another area of pushback was in positioning Flock as a more effective form of policing, and one that allowed police departments to do more with reduced staff. “If you look at where policing has gone over the last decade, but particularly post-COVID, law enforcement employment is declining rapidly. I think about a place like San Francisco, and there’s hundreds of open positions. They will probably never be filled,” he said, positioning Flock as the tech that would fill in those gaps. But pressed about abuse and the invasiveness of his company’s surveillance technology, Langley had no substantive answers. “I think if the idea is to curb abuse, I think there’s a way to do that that doesn’t disrupt the legal system, that doesn’t disrupt the efficacy and flow of a police department,” Langley said, without spelling out what those ideas were. For Langley, those seem to be matters of secondary importance, because his belief in Flock as a public good is so strong. “I think one of the unfortunate consequences of building a consequential company is this is the price you pay, and I think it’s worth it because there’s millions and millions of people who have a better life today because [of] Flock,” he said. “And clearly we’ve made our fair share of mistakes, and there’s some folks who disagree with what we do, but it’s worth it because one day they might be a victim,” Langley added.