Alex Schultz, Chief Data Officer at Meta, joins Sam for a wide-ranging conversation covering why Meta believes agentic commerce could become the majority of its business, why stablecoins are a foregone conclusion, and why human taste and creative conviction matter more in an AI world than ever before.
Alex Schultz, Chief Data Officer at Meta, joins Sam for a wide-ranging conversation covering why Meta believes agentic commerce could become the majority of its business, why stablecoins are a foregone conclusion, and why human taste and creative conviction matter more in an AI world than ever before.
Robert Way/iStock Editorial via Getty Images We are raising our valuation on Alibaba ( BABA ) to between $144/share and $165/share, vs. our prior valuation of $128/share to $148/share ( see link ) on the back of ongoing narrowing losses in the quick commerce (ie, QC) business, along with ongoing acceleration in AI and cloud. With the food delivery war between Meituan and JD beginning to rationaliz...
Robert Way/iStock Editorial via Getty Images We are raising our valuation on Alibaba ( BABA ) to between $144/share and $165/share, vs. our prior valuation of $128/share to $148/share ( see link ) on the back of ongoing narrowing losses in the quick commerce (ie, QC) business, along with ongoing acceleration in AI and cloud. With the food delivery war between Meituan and JD beginning to rationalize due to a combination of regulatory headwinds and industry participants shifting their focus to user monetization instead of user acquisition, we believe the narrowing losses and the high-margin cloud business could ultimately be constructive to BABA’s bottom line, hence our valuation increase. With forward P/E multiple approaching the prior trough and priced at 50% discount compared with the peak, we feel that the current valuation level serves as a floor and that any incremental positives could be a catalyst for re-rating. Capital IQ Indeed, consensus estimates on BABA have largely been in the negative with sell-side cutting revenue and operating profit estimates for FY2027 and FY2028 over the past 12 months on the back of never-ending food delivery subsidies war with Meituan and JD, which act as a heavy drag to margins, and the global concerns involving whether AI capex spend could eventually yield positive ROI. However, we believe the recent news on a mitigating food delivery war and AI product expansion could dissipate these concerns, which we believe will lead to upward revision in consensus estimates. Capital IQ In this report, we conduct a deep dive into BABA’s QC business and analyze the impact it has on group earnings. Our valuation increase is entirely on a higher QC profit assumption, as we believe a rational competitive environment is likely to be the status quo going forward. To be clear, we do not believe that competition within food delivery is entirely over in that we could still see aggressive seasonal promotions around the holiday. However, we do believe...
Mininyx Doodle/iStock via Getty Images Investment Overview The stock of Cambridge, Massachusetts-based biotech Prime Medicine, Inc. ( PRME ) rose in value by >15% in trading yesterday, to >$4.6 per share (market cap valuation of ~$835m), as it reported that it had secured: a positive, binding resolution of its previously disclosed arbitration with Beam Therapeutics, Inc. ( BEAM ) relating to the p...
Mininyx Doodle/iStock via Getty Images Investment Overview The stock of Cambridge, Massachusetts-based biotech Prime Medicine, Inc. ( PRME ) rose in value by >15% in trading yesterday, to >$4.6 per share (market cap valuation of ~$835m), as it reported that it had secured: a positive, binding resolution of its previously disclosed arbitration with Beam Therapeutics, Inc. ( BEAM ) relating to the parties’ 2019 Collaboration and License Agreement (Agreement). The Tribunal declared that PM647, Prime Medicine’s investigational Prime Editing drug for Alpha-1 Antitrypsin Deficiency (AATD), is within Prime Medicine’s "Field" as defined by the Agreement, and that Prime Medicine therefore did not breach the Agreement. Prime Medicine owes no monetary damages to Beam Therapeutics. Prime completed one of the largest biotech IPOs of 2022, raising ~$175m at a price of $17 per share, to develop its Prime gene editing technology, summarized as follows in its 2025 annual report / 10-K filing : Prime Editing is a gene editing approach that uses a Cas9 nickase fused to a reverse transcriptase and guided by a prime editing guide RNA, or pegRNA, to introduce defined edits at specified genomic locations. Unlike CRISPR nuclease systems that rely on double-stranded DNA breaks, or DSBs, and endogenous repair pathways such as non-homologous end joining, Prime Editing creates a single-stranded nick and directs the incorporation of a desired edit through reverse transcription using the pegRNA as a template. This method enables the precise correction, insertion, deletion, or replacement of DNA sequences and is capable of addressing a wide range of genetic abnormalities, including those not amenable to base editing or traditional homology-directed repair approaches. The pegRNA used in Prime Editing contains three functional components: (i) a spacer sequence that directs the Prime Editor to the target genomic locus; (ii) a primer binding site that anneals to the nicked target DNA strand; and (iii...
Advanced Micro Devices has soared over the past year amid excitement over its central-processing units. AMD shares were up 7.4% at $555.62 in early trading Thursday, adding to a 259% gain over the past 12 months through to Wednesday’s close.
Advanced Micro Devices has soared over the past year amid excitement over its central-processing units. AMD shares were up 7.4% at $555.62 in early trading Thursday, adding to a 259% gain over the past 12 months through to Wednesday’s close.
Meta Platforms ( META ) announced the release of its new Muse Spark 1.1 artificial intelligence model on Thursday, which it deemed a “significant upgrade” from the recently released Muse Spark. “Muse Spark 1.1 is a multimodal reasoning model built for agentic tasks, with major gains in tool and computer use, coding, and multimodal understanding,” Meta said in a statement. “With these improvements,...
Meta Platforms ( META ) announced the release of its new Muse Spark 1.1 artificial intelligence model on Thursday, which it deemed a “significant upgrade” from the recently released Muse Spark. “Muse Spark 1.1 is a multimodal reasoning model built for agentic tasks, with major gains in tool and computer use, coding, and multimodal understanding,” Meta said in a statement. “With these improvements, Muse Spark 1.1 advances the performance-efficiency frontier.” When combined with the release of the Muse Image model released earlier this week, Meta said it is getting “closer to our vision of personal superintelligence: models that help you pursue your goals, create what you imagine, deepen your relationships, and take action on what you value most.” The company's pivot to closed models has received some praise from Wall Street, as analysts believe it will boost Meta's chances of increasing monetization. In an interview on Bloomberg, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the updated Muse Spark model outperforms Google's ( GOOG ) ( GOOGL ) Gemini 3.1 Pro. In a blog post , Meta also compared the new AI model to those from Anthropic ( ANTHRO ) and OpenAI ( OPENAI ) and indicated it performed better in some areas. Zuckerberg also said Meta would be “aggressive” with its pricing and would price it lower than the competition. Muse Spark 1.1 was also built for AI agents, Meta said, claiming “exceptional performance” in certain tasks. “It tackles complex projects significantly faster than Muse Spark, as it is trained to orchestrate multi-agent systems to optimize end-to-end latency,” Meta explained. “As the main agent, it can gather context, make a plan, and delegate execution across parallel subagents. As a subagent, it adheres to its job, understands available tools, and knows when to escalate back to the main agent. Muse Spark 1.1 can actively manage its context window of 1 million tokens. It remembers actions, retrieves information from much earlier work, and compacts in a way that ...
Meta Platforms ( META ) announced the release of its new Muse Spark 1.1 artificial intelligence model on Thursday, which it deemed a “significant upgrade” from the recently released Muse Spark. “Muse Spark 1.1 is a multimodal reasoning model built for agentic tasks, with major gains in tool and computer use, coding, and multimodal understanding,” Meta said in a statement. “With these improvements,...
Meta Platforms ( META ) announced the release of its new Muse Spark 1.1 artificial intelligence model on Thursday, which it deemed a “significant upgrade” from the recently released Muse Spark. “Muse Spark 1.1 is a multimodal reasoning model built for agentic tasks, with major gains in tool and computer use, coding, and multimodal understanding,” Meta said in a statement. “With these improvements, Muse Spark 1.1 advances the performance-efficiency frontier.” When combined with the release of the Muse Image model released earlier this week, Meta said it is getting “closer to our vision of personal superintelligence: models that help you pursue your goals, create what you imagine, deepen your relationships, and take action on what you value most.” The company's pivot to closed models has received some praise from Wall Street, as analysts believe it will boost Meta's chances of increasing monetization. In an interview on Bloomberg, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the updated Muse Spark model outperforms Google's ( GOOG ) ( GOOGL ) Gemini 3.1 Pro. In a blog post , Meta also compared the new AI model to those from Anthropic ( ANTHRO ) and OpenAI ( OPENAI ) and indicated it performed better in some areas. Zuckerberg also said Meta would be “aggressive” with its pricing and would price it lower than the competition. Muse Spark 1.1 was also built for AI agents, Meta said, claiming “exceptional performance” in certain tasks. “It tackles complex projects significantly faster than Muse Spark, as it is trained to orchestrate multi-agent systems to optimize end-to-end latency,” Meta explained. “As the main agent, it can gather context, make a plan, and delegate execution across parallel subagents. As a subagent, it adheres to its job, understands available tools, and knows when to escalate back to the main agent. Muse Spark 1.1 can actively manage its context window of 1 million tokens. It remembers actions, retrieves information from much earlier work, and compacts in a way that ...
Levi Strauss & Co. (LEVI) CFO and chief growth officer Harmit Singh sits down with Yahoo Finance Executive Editor Brian Sozzi to talk more about the clothing brand's second quarter earnings results, its full-year outlook, and the growth it is seeing across its segments.
Levi Strauss & Co. (LEVI) CFO and chief growth officer Harmit Singh sits down with Yahoo Finance Executive Editor Brian Sozzi to talk more about the clothing brand's second quarter earnings results, its full-year outlook, and the growth it is seeing across its segments.
imaginima/iStock via Getty Images Investment Thesis The bullish outlook on IREN Limited ( IREN ) has only gotten stronger since my last coverage , and following the recent sell-off driven by Meta Platforms, Inc.'s ( META ) Meta Compute, despite the market misunderstanding the nature of the risks associated with the company's business model. IREN has transitioned from proving demand to execution wi...
imaginima/iStock via Getty Images Investment Thesis The bullish outlook on IREN Limited ( IREN ) has only gotten stronger since my last coverage , and following the recent sell-off driven by Meta Platforms, Inc.'s ( META ) Meta Compute, despite the market misunderstanding the nature of the risks associated with the company's business model. IREN has transitioned from proving demand to execution with $3.1 billion of contracted ARR, a $9.7 billion agreement with Microsoft, a $3.4 billion Nvidia partnership, and a 5 GW secured power portfolio. I expect that Horizon 1 commissioning and deployment will be the drivers that turn IREN from a speculative AI infra story into a contracted hyperscale platform. With proper management execution, the current valuation looks reasonable in relation to the company's exceptional revenue growth and long-term infrastructure shortage. Data by YCharts The Three Updates That Strengthened My Bullish Thesis First of all, Kambiz Aghili was appointed as the Chief Product Officer and Michael Nudelman as the Chief Development Officer of IREN. It might seem like an ordinary management change, but I view it as a strategic move. Mr. Aghili held the position of the head of product strategy at Oracle Corporation ( ORCL ) Cloud Infrastructure, where he had vast experience in enterprise cloud and multi-cloud platforms, while Mr. Nudelman will be responsible for further expansion of the 5 GW worldwide power portfolio of IREN. That is why it appears that the management of IREN is willing to invest not only in data centers' capacity but also in its software and products. Earnings Presentation Q3 Secondly, IREN was added to the Russell 1000 Index. Being added to any index does not affect the business fundamentals of the company but usually results in increased passive institutional ownership, improved liquidity, and a wider shareholder base. In case we are talking about the company that will need billions of dollars to be invested in AI infrastructure for ...
Kalshi ( KALSHI ) is seeking to expand its perpetual futures offerings beyond crypto into areas such as metals, foreign exchange, and energy, according to a media report on Thursday. Perpetual futures securities are derivative contracts with no expiration date, unlike traditional futures. After launching perpetual futures contracts for crypto trading in May, the prediction markets platform is in a...
Kalshi ( KALSHI ) is seeking to expand its perpetual futures offerings beyond crypto into areas such as metals, foreign exchange, and energy, according to a media report on Thursday. Perpetual futures securities are derivative contracts with no expiration date, unlike traditional futures. After launching perpetual futures contracts for crypto trading in May, the prediction markets platform is in advanced discussions with regulators to expand its offerings to other assets, Reuters reported, citing a Kalshi executive. "T he other asset classes that we’re looking at are very much driven by the market, for instance, things like gold," Udesh Jha, chief risk officer at Kalshi ( KALSHI ), told Reuters. The expansion would bring the upstart prediction markets platform into competition with traditional exchanges like Cboe Global ( CBOE ) and CME Group ( CME ). Last month, CME ( CME ) sued the U.S. Commodity and Futures Trading Commission over the regulator's decision to allow Kalshi ( KALSHI ) and Coinbase Global ( COIN ) to list perpetual futures. Jha also told the news organization that Kalshi ( KALSHI ) is eyeing perpetual futures tied to broad-based indexes and individual stocks. Since adding perpetual contracts, the securities have accounted for trading volume of $16.1B on the platform, Reuters said. CME ( CME ) stock fell 2.3%, and Cboe ( CBOE ) slipped 0.6%. More on Kalshi Inc Court rejects Kalshi's bid to stop New York oversight of sports prediction contracts Kalshi bets shift to Quantum, semiconductor stakes over OpenAI government deal Financial information for Kalshi Inc
Corn prices are down 2 to 4 cents early on Thursday. Futures fell back on Wednesday after rallying nearly 40 cents off the lows last week, with contracts down 3 to 8 ¾ cents at the close. Open interest was down 3,588 contracts on Wednesday. There were 88 deliveries issued...
Corn prices are down 2 to 4 cents early on Thursday. Futures fell back on Wednesday after rallying nearly 40 cents off the lows last week, with contracts down 3 to 8 ¾ cents at the close. Open interest was down 3,588 contracts on Wednesday. There were 88 deliveries issued...
(RTTNews) - Micron Technology, Inc. (MU), a manufacturer of semiconductors and storage products, Thursday announced that it is boosting its planned US fab and technology investments and is expecting to spend more than $250 billion through 2035, driven by surging demand for memory
(RTTNews) - Micron Technology, Inc. (MU), a manufacturer of semiconductors and storage products, Thursday announced that it is boosting its planned US fab and technology investments and is expecting to spend more than $250 billion through 2035, driven by surging demand for memory
格隆汇7月9日｜半导体设备股全线上涨，Aehr Test Systems涨超13%，科磊涨超9%，应用材料涨超8%，泛林集团、艾马克技术涨超7%，泰瑞达涨超5%，阿斯麦涨超3%。 消息面上，应用材料CEO Gary Dickerson透露，芯片制造商如今已将设备需求预测延伸至两年乃至更长时间，部分客户的规划视野甚至延伸至2030年。他认为，这种超前规划为应用材料等设备厂商提供了足够的信心，使其能够...
格隆汇7月9日｜半导体设备股全线上涨，Aehr Test Systems涨超13%，科磊涨超9%，应用材料涨超8%，泛林集团、艾马克技术涨超7%，泰瑞达涨超5%，阿斯麦涨超3%。 消息面上，应用材料CEO Gary Dickerson透露，芯片制造商如今已将设备需求预测延伸至两年乃至更长时间，部分客户的规划视野甚至延伸至2030年。他认为，这种超前规划为应用材料等设备厂商提供了足够的信心，使其能够有序扩大生产能力，而无需再像以往那样因半导体周期的不确定性而频繁调整节奏。(格隆汇)
Drazen_ Investor positioning in the materials sector ( XLB ) dropped to the 1st percentile, and traders are now heavily underweight, according to data from Deutsche Bank. Materials positioning (Deutsche Bank Asset Allocation) “It would not take much to trigger a sharp rebound,” according to Isabelnet analysts. The sector is down 1.1% from a month ago and down 3% in the past five days. Top Material...
Drazen_ Investor positioning in the materials sector ( XLB ) dropped to the 1st percentile, and traders are now heavily underweight, according to data from Deutsche Bank. Materials positioning (Deutsche Bank Asset Allocation) “It would not take much to trigger a sharp rebound,” according to Isabelnet analysts. The sector is down 1.1% from a month ago and down 3% in the past five days. Top Materials Stocks by Quant Rating: Alto Ingredients, Inc. ( ALTO ) - Quant rating: 4.96 Glencore plc ( GLNCY ) - Quant rating: 4.82 Nucor Corporation ( NUE ) - Quant rating: 4.80 Gerdau S.A. ( GGB ) - Quant rating: 4.78 Constellium SE ( CSTM ) - Quant rating: 4.77 Usinas Siderúrgicas de Minas Gerais S.A. ( USNZY ) - Quant rating: 4.75 Kaiser Aluminum Corporation ( KALU ) - Quant rating: 4.73 Sigma Lithium Corporation ( SGML ) - Quant rating: 4.67 Magnera Corporation ( MAGN ) - Quant rating: 4.67 Cementos Pacasmayo S.A.A. ( CPAC ) - Quant rating: 4.64 The Quant model evaluates stocks across five critical dimensions: growth, profitability, value, momentum, and rising analysts' earnings estimates. This computer-driven approach processes sophisticated trading algorithms to identify equities that collectively hold the strongest investment characteristics. The automated stock selection process efficiently sorts through large amounts of data beyond human capacity, refreshing daily to ensure recommendations remain timely and based on real-time valuation levels. Materials ETFs: ( XLB ), ( VAW ), ( IYM ), ( FXZ ), ( MXI ), and ( RSPM ). More on State Street® Materials Select Sector SPDR® ETF XLB: Materials' Alpha Cools As The U.S.-Iran Conflict Presses On Weekly ETFs: Nine of 11 sectors record inflows; bitcoin leads outflows Nucor, LyondellBasell, and H.B. Fuller top materials earnings-revisions list Seeking Alpha’s Quant Rating on State Street® Materials Select Sector SPDR® ETF Dividend scorecard for State Street® Materials Select Sector SPDR® ETF
Exclusive: Source close to co-claimant Prince Harry says he is protective of social campaigner and will not ‘see her out of pocket’ Doreen Lawrence, the social justice campaigner, will not foot any of a multimillion-pound bill for the failed attempt to sue the publisher of the Daily Mail, the Guardian understands. Lawrence, the mother of the murdered teenager Stephen Lawrence , whose case was the ...
Exclusive: Source close to co-claimant Prince Harry says he is protective of social campaigner and will not ‘see her out of pocket’ Doreen Lawrence, the social justice campaigner, will not foot any of a multimillion-pound bill for the failed attempt to sue the publisher of the Daily Mail, the Guardian understands. Lawrence, the mother of the murdered teenager Stephen Lawrence , whose case was the subject of a long-running Daily Mail campaign from the late 1990s, was one of seven claimants defeated in court over claims the Mail titles used unlawful methods to source stories. Continue reading...