|
|
|
|
Good morning.
“There is a trope that says if you find two ants in your kitchen the best estimate of the total number of ants in your kitchen is not two,” Bernstein analysts wrote Thursday, predicting that Jensen Huang, at that point implicated in two extramarital affairs, would soon face more allegations. It didn’t take long. Reuters reported the former Nvidia CEO had an alleged third affair, his second with a company employee, hours after the company announced he had stepped down.
The spotlight will only get brighter. Not long after resigning, Huang agreed to appear before Congress to discuss his affair that didn’t involve an Nvidia employee, just the one with a suspected Chinese intelligence asset, no big deal, before Thanksgiving. Also facing the bright lights is US Commerce Department Secretary Howard Lutnick, whose reported opposition to stringent chip export controls and cozy relationship with Huang has drawn bipartisan scrutiny, including from White House officials who told Reuters he could be ousted over the Huang Affair Affair. On Kalshi, his odds of leaving the Cabinet spiked on the news. China Hawks are seeing all kinds of ants in the kitchen and are reaching for their stockpile of Raid.
|
|
|
|
MARKETS
|
|
|
Stock data as of market close on November 12, 2026.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Photo via Jameson_Wu / EyePress/Newscom
|
After Jensen Huang, the longtime Nvidia CEO and charismatic face of the AI boom, resigned Thursday, Elon Musk let him know on X that he’s leaving the door open at his shop — and we’d not be the least surprised if HBO called about a miniseries.
In the immediate term, the company he cofounded in 1993 is facing a mountain of scrutiny, and Wall Street is betting one of the chief beneficiaries will be a rival led by Huang’s cousin.
All in the Extended Family
Advanced Micro Devices CEO Lisa Su is Huang’s uncle’s granddaughter, making them cousins once removed (aka cousins from different generations). And investors who threw their lot in with Su’s AMD, which is up 162% this year on the Nasdaq, have been rewarded in ways that rivals including Nvidia, down 12%, and Broadcom, up 4.8%, haven’t delivered.
Su has proven very successful at wooing major AI hyperscalers, as well as neocloud providers, to adopt AMD hardware to bypass supply constraints at Nvidia, reducing dependencies on one vendor in the process. OpenAI, Meta and Oracle are among those to ink major deals with AMD this year. Su also made a bold acquisition this year, paying $8.2 billion for World Labs, a California-based frontier AI company led by the “Godmother of AI” and former Google Cloud Chief Scientist Fei-Fei Li that develops models capable of building 3-D virtual environments to train robots and autonomous systems. The work has paid off: Revenue rose 45% to $13.4 billion in the third quarter. Data center revenue nearly doubled to $8.5 billion on the strength of AMD’s Instinct AI GPU chips, a direct competitor to Nvidia’s AI accelerators. Net income climbed 95% to $2.4 billion, and the company forecast faster-than-expected growth, including $17 billion in fourth-quarter revenue.
Meanwhile, Huang’s admitted and alleged affairs, especially the one with the suspected foreign spy, mean Nvidia could soon be experiencing more probes than outer space (Huang may wish he was on a Mars rover at this point). On top of an arm’s-length internal review, the Justice Department, the FBI and congressional Democrats are all reportedly lining up their own investigations. “We see a runway for [AMD] shares to work from here … as AMD stays focused on execution while its largest competitor, Nvidia, contends with a growing leadership and regulatory imbroglio,” said William Blair analysts, in a note to clients Thursday. That was reflected in market sentiment:
- AMD rallied 5.9% on Thursday and Broadcom 5.5%, while Nvidia closed down 4.3%.
- Of 48 analysts surveyed by Zacks Investment Research, 40 rate AMD a buy and the average $660 price target implies the company’s stock has a 19% upside.
  Not So Fast: Don’t sleep on Nvidia. Semiconductor research firm Silicon Analysts estimates the GPU leader still holds a commanding 80% to 90% market share in the AI accelerator market, while second place AMD has just 5% to 7%. Dan Ives, a partner at Yorkville Ives who earlier this week said Huang’s “spy soap opera” could cause Nvidia shares to lose up to 30% in value, said Thursday that his firm “remains bullish” on the stock. Yorkville’s $225 price target implies a 35% upside.
Written by Sean Craig
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Closing the books in under 24 hours used to be a pipe dream …
… then AI tools emerged. Now it’s a real goal for CFOs.
But these tools are at the mercy of the data behind them. Trust AI with your numbers and you’re banking on that data being correct, with no gaps in what it pulled. If either falls short, you could brief the board on numbers that may not be 100% accurate.
In this on-demand webinar, Oracle NetSuite’s Tom Kelly shows how NetSuite’s AI tools help you iron out these creases, without sacrificing more hours. You’ll learn to:
- Spot data gaps fast and see which to fix first.
- Catch errors as they happen, not at month-end.
- Stop bad entries before they reach your reports.
Watch the free session before your next close.*
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Can Jell-O appeal to the gym bro? Kraft Heinz sure hopes so.
After announcing it would not pursue its long-mulled corporate divorce earlier this year, the packaged food conglomerate re-emerged into the spotlight Thursday showcasing a slew of new products it hopes appeal to the health-conscious and adventurous modern eater. That includes protein-packed Jell-O, fiber-packed Crystal Light and cheesy Kraft Mac & Cheese ramen noodles. Whether shoppers actually bite is another question entirely.
Cottage Cheese Industry
Pick your trend: the rise of GLP-1s, keto diet culture, the MAHA revolution. No matter how you slice the Velveeta cheese block, it’s a tough time to be a purveyor of many brand-name ultra-processed foods. Case in point: Kraft Heinz is in the midst of its third straight year of declining sales. But CEO Steve Cahillane, the former Kellogg top boss who took the job in January and subsequently paused the split, says health and wellness culture isn’t entirely to blame. “These brands have been underinvested in for over 10 years,” Cahillane said at a press conference Thursday. “Brands that stop being invested in stop being relevant, and for too long that’s what happened here at Kraft Heinz.”
It’s the driving ethos of a massive packaged food comeback plan worth unwrapping:
- Kraft Heinz says it plowed $50 million this year into developing new brands and improving old ones. Other results of the product push include a protein-packed PowerMac & Cheese, launched earlier this year and which Cahillane said could return the brand to growth for the first time in years, as well as a rethink of the Philadelphia brand as consumers ditch cream cheese for healthier options such as cottage cheese.
- It’s just a small slice of the Jell-O Chocolate Pudding reinvestment pie, which also includes $325 million toward marketing, $250 million toward product costs and $75 million toward hiring 400 new employees.
The plan, Cahillane said, is to halt the sales decline by next year and return to full-year growth by 2028. Easier said than done, of course. “Success will depend on whether these brands have credibility to adapt to consumers’ evolving nutritional needs … while sticking to their core competence in convenience and taste,” TD Cowen analyst Robert Moskow wrote in a note to clients Thursday.
Coffee Break-Up: Despite pausing the break-up (a move that got the thumbs up from Berkshire Hathaway, the company’s largest shareholder), Cahillane isn’t committed to keeping every brand in-house. Earlier this month, Kraft Heinz said it was selling a majority stake of its North American portfolio of coffee brands (which includes Gevalia and Maxwell House) to an affiliate of private equity firm One Rock Capital Partners in a deal valued at $650 million.
Written by Brian Boyle
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Photo via Juliane Sonntag/IMAGO//Newscom
|
A lot can change in a year, just usually not this much.
On Thursday, little-known defense tech company Ondas reported third-quarter revenue of $167 million, marking a stunning year-over-year increase of more than 1,550%, or a 16.5-fold jump for the less math inclined. That’s impressive, just not to Wall Street. Shares of the company sank 7% on Thursday, thanks to a quarterly $0.11 earnings per share loss that came in larger than expectations. Consider the report a sign of the major growth — and correlated major expectations — for the next generation of defense firms.
FIFA’s Top Defender
The growth was not entirely organic. The company, primarily a maker of autonomous drones, has been on an aggressive M&A shopping spree, including six key acquisitions in the most recent quarter mostly across the drone and autonomous weapons space. A year ago, Ondas acquired counter-drone systems company Sentrycs, whose tech was employed at many World Cup host stadiums this summer. However, pro forma organic revenue, which includes portfolio companies’ preacquisition sales in the prior period, still grew 64% year over year in the third quarter.
Ondas expects the rapid growth will continue:
- Full-year revenue is now expected to reach “at least” $550 million, which was the high end of its previous forecast range. For next year, Ondas said it is setting an initial revenue target of $1.1 billion. Its order book, meanwhile, surged 36% from the prior quarter to $835 million.
- Still, gross margins dropped to 21% from 43% a quarter prior; total losses reached $64 million, way up from just $7 million a year ago. On the bright side, companywide adjusted EBITDA profitability is now expected to arrive in next year’s third quarter, Ondas said, one quarter earlier than it previously estimated.
Alex Karp Fishing: The most significant recent development for Ondas may just be a new partnership with Palantir. In October, the two firms announced Regna AI, a standalone company “initially wholly owned by Ondas” and “powered by Palantir” that aims to help customers “deploy mission-specialized fine-tuned AI models within their own sovereign environments,” the two firms said in a statement.
Written by Brian Boyle
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
- Out of Reach: US home sales fell to the lowest since 2010 last month amid high mortgage rates that have pushed potential buyers out of the market, according to the National Association of Realtors.
- Son Setting: Donald Trump Jr. is no longer an advisor at Kalshi, after both sides agreed it was a conflict of interest that the venture capital firm where he is a partner owns a stake in rival prediction market Polymarket.
- It’s Not Just You: Millions around the world are without email, meeting tools and other crucial online services for the second day in a row due to a major Microsoft outage.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Disclaimer
*By filling and submitting this form you understand and agree that the use of Oracle’s website is subject to the Oracle.com Terms of Use. Additional details regarding Oracle’s collection and use of your personal information, including information about access, retention, rectification, deletion, security, cross-border transfers and other topics, is available in the Oracle Privacy Policy.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
0 komentar:
Posting Komentar