A rally in tech stocks paused on Thursday as investors kept Nvidia’s (NVDA) earnings report in focus among a slew of other tech headlines, including some new details about SpaceX’s upcoming public debut.
Nvidia’s earnings on Wednesday surpassed high expectations amid strong artificial intelligence data center demand and rising competition among chipmakers. The company also boosted its quarterly dividend to $0.25 per share.
Also on Wednesday afternoon, Elon Musk’s rocket company SpaceX (SPAX.PVT) filed its S-1 IPO prospectus with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The filing revealed details about the company’s financials, including that it generated $18.67 billion in revenue in 2025 and reported a loss from operations of $2.58 billion for that year.
On Thursday, several quantum computing stocks took a leg higher after the Trump administration agreed to invest $2 billion in companies such as IBM (IBM), GlobalFoundries (GFS), and D-Wave (QBTS), among others, for stakes in the companies.
On the artificial intelligence front, The Information reported that Anthropic (ANTH.PVT) is in talks with Microsoft (MSFT) to use the hyperscaler’s AI chips.
Meanwhile, investors breathed a sigh of relief after Samsung workers decided to postpone their planned 18-day strike at the world’s largest memory chip manufacturer, according to South Korean news agency Yonhap. A strike at Samsung would cause significant disruption to South Korea’s economy and to global supply chains that rely on its chips.
- Ines Ferré
D-Wave, Rigetti and other quantum stocks jump as Trump administration doles out $2 billion in exchange for equity stakes
Quantum-related stocks IBM (IBM), D-Wave Quantum (QBTS), Rigetti Computing (RGTI), and Infleqtion (INFQ) jumped on Thursday. IBM was up more than 7% while the others rose more than 20%.
The companies announced they signed letters of intent with the Department of Commerce to receive money for research and development projects.
The dole-out is part of a government initiative to distribute $2 billion in grants to nine quantum-related firms in exchange for a minority stake in those companies, according to the Wall Street Journal.
IBM said it will receive $1 billion from its government contract to build a quantum chip foundry.
Rigetti will also receive $100 million in CHIPS Act funding over three years, with the Department of Commerce taking an equity stake in the company in exchange for the capital.
D-Wave and Infleqtion announced similar deals with the Department of Commerce tied to ownership interests.
- Pras Subramanian
SpaceX files IPO prospectus, offering a peek into its finances
SpaceX (SPAX.PVT) has finally offered investors a public view of its internal finances, as the rocket company filed its S-1 IPO prospectus with the Securities and Exchange Commission ahead of its investor road show, reportedly planned for June 5.
For the three months ended March 31, 2026, SpaceX reported revenue on a consolidated basis of $4.694 billion, a loss from operations of $1.943 billion, and Adjusted EBITDA of $1.127 billion.
In 2025, SpaceX generated revenue on a consolidated basis of $18.674 billion, and a loss from operations of $2.589 billion and Adjusted EBITDA of $6.584 billion.
SpaceX said its Space and Connectivity segments contributed the “substantial majority of consolidated revenue in the three months ended March 31, 2026, and the year ended December 31, 2025.
- Jared Blikre
Here's how Nvidia stock has historically performed after earnings
For Nvidia (NVDA) investors, the first move after earnings has historically been only part of the story. Buying the stock just before quarterly results has produced modest short-term gains, but the longer-term picture has been much stronger.
This chart shows the difference clearly.
Since 2016, Nvidia’s post-earnings returns have been positive across every holding period studied. But the edge has been far more modest over the next day, week, or month than over a quarter or a year. The median gain has been only 0.3% after one day, 3.3% after one week, and 0.4% after one month. That rises to 11.1% over one quarter and 87.6% over one year.
That helps frame what traders were up against heading into Wednesday’s report.
- Grace O'Donnell
4 important callouts from Nvidia's earnings
In commentary provided by Nvidia’s CFO Colette Kress, Nvidia revealed four key developments in its business, beyond the company’s first quarter earnings per share beat:
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Hyperscalers like Amazon (AMZN), Alphabet (GOOG, GOOGL), and Microsoft (MSFT) still account for half of Nvidia’s data center revenue. The other half came from “AI Clouds, industrial, enterprise, and sovereign customers.”
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Nvidia did not ship any Hopper products to China during the quarter, compared with $4.6 billion in the first quarter of fiscal year 2026. Officials in Beijing have discouraged Chinese businesses from buying the chips as they look to boost China’s domestic chip industry.
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Nvidia is changing its reporting framework: The company will have two market platforms, Data Center, which includes Hyperscale and ACIE, and Edge Computing, which incorporates AI Clouds, Industrial, and Enterprise.
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On May 18, Nvidia’s board approved an increase to its quarterly dividend from $0.01 per share to $0.25 per share as well as an $80.0 billion share buyback plan.
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- Grace O'Donnell
Nvidia tops Q1 estimates, offers upbeat outlook on strong chip sales
Nvidia (NVDA) stock rose 1.4% in the minutes after releasing earnings.
The chip giant and leader in the artificial intelligence industry topped analysts’ expectations on the top and bottom lines and offered a better-than-anticipated Q2 outlook.
Yahoo Finance’s Dan Howley reports:
For the quarter, Nvidia saw earnings per share (EPS) of $1.87 on revenue of $81.62 billion, better than the $1.77 and $79.18 analysts were expecting.
The company’s data center business brought in the bulk of its revenue, topping out at $75.2 billion. Wall Street analysts were projecting $73.47 billion. That’s up from the $39.11 billion Nvidia reported in Q1 last year.
The company also boosted its quarterly dividend to $0.25 per share.
Nvidia is contending with increasing competition in the AI processor space, including from Cerebras (CBRS), which held its initial public offering last Thursday.
- Grace O'Donnell
Samsung workers postpone strike, averting global chip supply disruptions: Yonhap
Samsung Electronics (005930.KS) workers decided to postpone their general strike that may have impacted global chip supplies, according to South Korea’s Yonhap News Agency.
"We will postpone the general strike scheduled for May 21-June 7 until further notice," the labor union stated. It also noted that members will participate in a vote on the tentative wage deal starting Saturday.
The announcement came after talks appeared to break down on Wednesday. However, both sides said they would agree to continue working toward a deal. Government officials, who have mediated talks, threatened to invoke emergency powers to force a resolution on the issue.
At the center of the conflict is a dispute over employee compensation as Samsung benefits from booming demand due to artificial intelligence. The union was seeking for Samsung to share 15% of its annual operating profit with workers through employee bonuses.
While the strike has been put on ice for now, if workers were to go on strike it could hamper the global chip market, which has already been facing constraints.
- Grace O'Donnell
Meta stock falls as the company lays off 8,000 workers amid AI push
Meta (META) stock fell as the Big Tech company began a restructuring plan on Wednesday morning that will cut thousands of jobs while focusing investment on its artificial intelligence efforts.
Bloomberg reports:
The company began notifying workers around the world Wednesday morning, starting with employees across Asia, who got the note at 4 a.m. Singapore time. US-based staff are also expected to receive word during their morning, according to an internal memo.
Staff are being encouraged to work from home while the company cuts roughly 8,000 roles globally. This latest round of cuts is expected to hit Meta’s engineering and product teams in particular and additional layoffs could come later in the year, said people familiar with the company’s plans, who asked not to be named as the information is not public.
- Grace O'Donnell
Samsung faces chip plant strike that threatens global supply
Negotiations between Samsung (005930.KS) and its labor union to avert a massive strike are coming down to the wire, and the implications are global.
Bloomberg reports:
Talks between Samsung Electronics Co. and its largest labor union broke down, raising the prospect of a strike that may disrupt global chip supply and hamper an important engine of Korean economic growth.
A general work stoppage will go ahead on Thursday after Samsung’s management rejected a proposal from government mediators that had been accepted by the union, labor leader Choi Seung-ho told reporters. Hours later, South Korean labor minister Kim Young-hoon called for direct negotiations between the two sides, though it’s unclear whether even that intervention could resolve their differences. Samsung shares tumbled as much as 4.4% before recouping losses in afternoon trading.
The collapse in negotiations puts the global technology supply chain at risk because Samsung is the world’s biggest supplier of the chips that go into devices from data center servers to smartphones and electric vehicles. The global AI infrastructure rollout has enriched South Korean companies on a scale not seen before, putting Samsung on track to become one of the world’s most profitable firms this year. Its semiconductor arm posted a 48-fold jump in profit for the March quarter.
- Daniel Howley
Google debuts Gemini 3.5 family of AI models, ramping up competition with OpenAI, Anthropic
Google (GOOG, GOOGL) unveiled its newest AI model family during its annual Google I/O conference on Tuesday. Called Gemini 3.5, the company said the models combine frontier intelligence with the ability to perform actions via AI agents.
Google said Gemini 3.5 Flash will be the first of the new models, with a Pro version coming next month.
Flash, the company said, provides intelligence that rivals other large flagship models, with faster response rates, and is its most powerful coding and agentic model, topping even its Gemini 3.1 Pro.
The model is available today via the Gemini app, in Google Search via AI Mode, and via Google’s new Gemini Spark AI agent.
Google is in a constant back-and-forth race between Anthropic (ANTH.PVT), OpenAI (OPAI.PVT), and other model builders to lead in AI capabilities. The company was widely seen as lagging well behind its competitors until it launched its Gemini 3.0 in November 2025.
That helped reset the narrative surrounding Google’s AI know-how on Wall Street and contributed to its stock price climbing 126% since the company debuted the software.
- Daniel Howley
Google Search is getting its biggest update in 25 years
Google (GOOG, GOOGL) on Tuesday debuted an updated version of its all-important Search product, rolling out improved AI capabilities that let you ask more detailed questions, create search-based AI agents, and better visualize topics via AI-generated interface tools.
Unveiled today at the company’s annual Google I/O conference in Mountain View, Calif., the upgraded Search bar gets the web giant’s latest Gemini 3.5 Flash AI model and lets you search for photos, videos, files, and Chrome tabs, the company explained.
In one example, a user uploaded two reference photos, one of a dress and the other of a piece of orange fabric. The person then asked Google to find a similar dress in the same fabric color for under $150. Search returned a series of matches, followed by questions asking for the user’s size and the occasion to narrow down the options.
You can also have back-and-forth conversations with the updated Search from Google’s AI Overview panel, which will automatically launch you into AI Mode to continue the chat.
- Daniel Howley
Samsung and Google show off AI-powered glasses, taking on Meta as Apple preps its own eyewear
Samsung (005930.KS) and Google (GOOG, GOOGL) revealed their upcoming line of smart glasses on Tuesday. The companies said the intelligent eyewear is intended to be used as a companion device for users’ smartphones and will feature designs from Gentle Monster and Warby Parker (WRBY).
According to Samsung, the glasses are meant to be used hands-free and can perform tasks like helping you navigate by voice, providing personalized suggestions for locations like a nearby coffee shop on your regular walking route, and placing an order for pickup.
The glasses will also summarize text notifications and allow you to add events to your calendar. Samsung said the eyewear will also offer real-time voice translation and can translate text, such as menus and signs.
“This intelligent eyewear marks an important step in Samsung’s vision for AI,” Jay Kim, Samsung’s executive vice president and head of consumer experience office and mobile experience business, said in a statement.
“With this new AI form factor, we are further expanding the Galaxy device ecosystem, where each device is optimized to deliver unique AI experiences that best fit each form,” Kim said.
- Jake Conley
OpenAI founding member who led AI efforts at Tesla joins Anthropic
OpenAI (OPAI.PVT) founding member Andrej Karpathy has joined rival lab Anthropic (ANTH.PVT), Karpathy said on Tuesday.
In a post to X, Karpathy announcing his decision, the AI researcher wrote, “I think the next few years at the frontier of LLMs will be especially formative.”
After working as a founding member of OpenAI, Karpathy joined Elon Musk’s Tesla (TSLA) as the carmaker’s head of artificial intelligence and autopilot vision. He then re-joined OpenAI before departing the AI lab once more.
Karpathy is also credited with popularizing the term “vibecoding.”
Anthropic announced Tuesday that the auditing giant KPMG is integrating the AI lab’s Claude product throughout its operations, and that all of KPMG’s employees will have access to the AI software.
- Grace O'Donnell
Tech sell-off accelerates in afternoon trading
Tech stocks broadly fell on Tuesday as investors went risk-off and perhaps took some profits as higher bond yields weighed on equity markets.
As my colleagues Brian Sozzi and Ines Ferré pointed out this morning, high-flying chip stocks like Micron (MU) and SanDisk (SNDK) have fallen over the past five days, while beaten-down software names saw some momentum return.
But by afternoon trading, the tech sector was a sea of red, and both the Tech-Software Sector ETF (IGV) and the Philadelphia Semiconductor Sector Index (^SOX) fell.
The “Magnificent Seven” stocks — Apple (AAPL), Alphabet (GOOGL, GOOG), Microsoft (MSFT), Amazon (AMZN), Meta (META), Tesla (TSLA), and Nvidia (NVDA) — were under pressure too, with Amazon and Tesla seeing the biggest declines.
- Grace O'Donnell
Samsung, labor union meet again as Seoul threatens to intervene to block strike
Reuters reports:
Samsung Electronics and its South Korean labour union began another round of government-mediated talks on Tuesday to break an impasse in negotiations over pay and bonuses and avert the biggest strike in the tech conglomerate's history.
The two sides are under mounting pressure to prevent an imminent strike by 45,000 workers that could hurt the Korean economy and global supply chains by disrupting chip production. South Korea's prime minister threatened over the weekend to step in through emergency arbitration to resolve the crisis.
Samsung and the labour union remained far apart during talks on Monday, the chairman of the National Labor Relations Commission told reporters. But he said on Tuesday the two sides are narrowing some differences and there is still a possibility that they could reach an agreement.
- Grace O'Donnell
Google, Blackstone launch cloud company as Wall Street races to fund AI boom
Yahoo Finance’s David Hollerith reports:
Google (GOOG, GOOGL) and Blackstone (BX) are launching an artificial intelligence cloud company, the latest sign that Wall Street is getting deeper in the AI infrastructure race.
The joint venture will provide data center capacity, operations, networking, and Google Cloud's Tensor Processing Units (TPUs) as a compute-as-a-service offering.
The business will give customers another way to access Google’s TPUs, in a similar fashion to cloud provider CoreWeave (CRWV).
Blackstone said it will make an initial $5 billion equity investment through its funds. It expects the company’s first 500 megawatts of power to come online by 2027. Though precise figures aren't disclosed, Blackstone would be a majority shareholder, according to a person familiar with the deal.
The announcement is a major signal for how the hard assets that power artificial intelligence’s computing needs are becoming a highly appealing investment for finance.
- Jake Conley
Elon Musk loses $150 billion lawsuit against OpenAI
A jury rejected claims by Tesla (TSLA) leader Elon Musk that OpenAI (OPAI.PVT) and its leader, Sam Altman, violated key tenets of its nonprofit status, finding that Musk waited too long to file the suit and exceeded the statute of limitations.
Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers accepted the advisory jury’s verdict, bringing to a close a sprawling legal case that could have sent shockwaves through Silicon Valley.
On Monday afternoon, a nine-person federal jury rejected Musk’s $150 billion case against OpenAI, closing a two-week trial that featured testimony from two of Silicon Valley’s most visible leaders.
The jury ruled that Musk’s “Breach of Charitable Trust” claim against Sam Altman, OpenAI co-founder Greg Brockman, and OpenAI itself is barred by the statute of limitations.
The jury also ruled that Musk’s “Aiding and Abetting Breach of Charitable Trust” claim against Microsoft (MSFT) exceeded the statute of limitations.
Musk’s lawyers argued over the past two weeks that OpenAI breached its founding agreement as a nonprofit by adding on a for-profit entity and raising outside capital, including $13 billion from Microsoft.
Musk had been seeking $150 billion in damages for Altman’s removal from OpenAI’s board of directors.
- Grace O'Donnell
Samsung and its labor union extend talks as a disruptive strike looms
A dispute over semiconductor workers’ bonuses in Korea could upend global technology supply chains and weigh on South Korea’s economy, as Samsung’s (016360.KS) labor union has threatened to go on strike on May 21 for 18 days.
On Sunday, Samsung and the union agreed to extend negotiations after the first round of government-mediated talks failed and a South Korean court granted a partial injunction that could compel workers to show up amid a strike, according to Reuters.
Relations between the world’s largest memory chip manufacturer and its workers broke down over how bonuses are allocated. Samsung is expected to bring in $200 billion in operating profits this year amid booming chip demand, and employees are seeking a 15% share of those profits.
At stake, should the strike move forward, is 22.8% of South Korea's exports, which come from Samsung, as well as broader economic fallout across industries that rely on memory chips, including artificial intelligence, gaming, and consumer electronics like laptops. Already, companies are dealing with supply bottlenecks for memory and storage as AI data centers scoop up these components to try to meet booming demand.
"Just one day of suspension at Samsung Electronics' semiconductor factory is expected to incur direct losses of as much as 1 trillion won [$667.68 million]," South Korea’s Prime Minister Kim Min-seok said on Sunday, per Reuters.
- Pras Subramanian
SpaceX reportedly issues 5-for-1 stock split as IPO timeline accelerates
SpaceX (SPAX.PVT) is barreling toward its initial public offering, and it is trying to make its stock even more attractive with a stock split before it even debuts.
Bloomberg reported over the weekend that SpaceX told its investors it will implement a 5-for-1 stock split, a move that would potentially reduce the price of the stock ahead of its IPO.
SpaceX informed shareholders that the current fair market value per share has been adjusted to about $105.32 from $526.59 as a result of the split, per Bloomberg sources.
The stock split will be processed this week and is expected to be officially completed by May 22, the sources said.
News of the split comes as SpaceX is quickly headed toward the public markets. On Friday, Reuters reported that SpaceX is planning to price its IPO as early as June 11, with the rocket company listing on the Nasdaq starting on June 12.
- Grace O'Donnell
Here's how Nvidia stock has historically performed after earnings
Yahoo Finance’s Jared Blikre reports:
For Nvidia (NVDA) investors, the first move after earnings has historically been only part of the story. Buying the stock just before quarterly results has produced modest short-term gains, but the longer-term picture has been much stronger.
This chart shows the difference clearly.
Since 2016, Nvidia’s post-earnings returns have been positive across every holding period studied. But the edge has been far more modest over the next day, week, or month than over a quarter or a year. The median gain has been only 0.3% after one day, 3.3% after one week, and 0.4% after one month. That rises to 11.1% over one quarter and 87.6% over one year.
That helps frame what traders are up against heading into the next report.
Options are pricing in a 6% post-earnings move, well above Nvidia’s typical daily range over the prior quarter. But it’s also close to what the stock has already shown it can do around earnings, based on its most recent setup.
- Grace O'Donnell
Nvidia to report Q1 earnings as chip competition grows
AI heavyweight Nvidia (NVDA) will report its first quarter results on May 20, in what is easily one of the most anticipated announcements of the earnings season.
Yahoo Finance’s Daniel Howley previews what to expect:
In addition to its China woes, Nvidia is contending with increasing competition in the AI chip space. Chip company Cerebras (CBRS) held its initial public offering on Thursday, with shares climbing 68%.
Cerebras sells a different form of AI processor than Nvidia, which the company says offers faster overall performance speeds.
Nvidia is also facing ever-increasing competition from AMD (AMD), which will launch a competing rack-scale server system later this year, as well as from customers, including Amazon (AMZN) and Google (GOOG, GOOGL), which are offering their AI chips to third-party customers.
In its latest earnings report, Amazon announced that its chip business now has an annual revenue run rate of more than $20 billion and is growing at triple-digit percentages year over year.