Meta Platforms Jumps 9% on Potential Plans to Sell AI Compute, Challenging Amazon, Microsoft, Google
Shares of Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:META) are up 9% to $613 in morning trading, marking one of the sharpest single-session moves for the stock this year. The catalyst is a Bloomberg report that the company is building a cloud infrastructure business to sell its excess AI computing capacity to outside customers. If confirmed, the shift would put Meta Platforms into direct competition with the biggest names in cloud. The jump reframes a stock that had been under sustained pressure. Meta Platforms stock is still down 7.45% year to date, as investors questioned the payoff on the company's aggressive AI capital spending. Today's rally begins to close that gap. Per Bloomberg, Meta Platforms is weighing two options: hosting AI models for developers to access (compared to Amazon's (NASDAQ:AMZN) AWS Bedrock), and renting out raw compute capacity as a "neocloud," an approach the report explicitly likened to CoreWeave (NASDAQ:CRWV). If it proceeds, the business would compete directly with Amazon Web Services, Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) Azure, and Alphabet's (NASDAQ:GOOGL) Google Cloud. Those three remain the entrenched incumbents in the space. The report echoes comments Meta Platforms CEO Mark Zuckerberg made at the company's May shareholder meeting, where he called the idea "definitely on the table". He noted that companies ask "almost every week" to buy Meta Platforms' spare compute or model access at a premium, framing external sales as a hedge in case the company overbuilt.
OpenAI proposes 5% stake to Trump administration to ease Washington pressure: report
A 5% holding would be worth roughly $42.6 billion, after the AI fab closed a record-breaking funding round in March at a post-money valuation of $852 billion. The U.S. government holds a 10% stake in Intel Corp after an $8.9 billion investment in the chipmaker's common stock.
NextEra’s $67 Billion Megamerger Proves Dominion Was the Real AI Infrastructure Prize All Along
Revenue hit $5.02 billion, up 23.1% year over year, with adjusted EPS of $0.95 against a $0.91 estimate. Dominion Energy Virginia operating earnings jumped $109 million as Loudoun County hyperscaler load compounded. NextEra’s earnings report leaned on Florida and renewables backlog. Adjusted EPS rose 10% to $1.09, FPL added roughly 100,000 customers, and NextEra Energy Resources added 4 GW to backlog, taking the total to about 33 GW. Dominion controls regulated transmission corridors into Northern Virginia, the undisputed data center capital of the world. NextEra owns generation scale across 49 states, plus the recommissioning of the 615-megawatt Duane Arnold nuclear plant with Google and a 9.5 GW gas build in Texas and Pennsylvania under the U.S.-Japan trade deal. Dominion shareholders get an implied $76 per share via 0.8138 NEE shares plus a $360 million cash sweetener. The stock trades at $69.39, up 20.88% year to date, so the market is pricing regulatory friction. Virginia regulators remember NextEra’s $150 million Florida political interference settlement. CVOW cost recovery, the July 4, 2026 clean-energy tax-credit deadline, and the $2.24 billion termination fee matter more than the next quarterly earnings report. Dominion offers the cleaner setup today on the numbers. Holders currently see a 3.84% yield and a roughly 10% spread to the $76 implied deal price while regulators work. If the deal closes, you convert into NextEra shares at a baked-in ratio. If it breaks, Dominion still owns the Loudoun corridor every hyperscaler needs.
Dan Ives Just Gave Elon Musk and SpaceX Some Great News
The primary profitability driver, Ives wrote, is the company's Connectivity division, which includes the Starlink global satellite internet constellation, comprising 9,600 satellites in low Earth orbit. Starlink provides mobile and broadband services in 30 countries and six continents, currently serving more than 10.3 million customers. SpaceX already has deals with Alphabet, Anthropic, and Reflection AI to provide computing capacity in terrestrial data centers. SpaceX is expected to generate $2 billion per month from those contracts. Goldman Sachs, the lead underwriter for the IPO, projects that the company's revenue will jump from $6.6 billion in 2025 to $352 billion by the end of the decade. But to make that happen, SpaceX plans to spend $350 billion in capital expenditures by 2030.
US futures edge lower as investors await Warsh remarks and key economic data: Dow Jones, S&P, Nasdaq, Wall Street
May job openings exceeded expectations, while housing and consumer confidence figures disappointed. Together with hawkish remarks from Cleveland Federal Reserve President Beth Hammack, the stronger labour market data reinforced expectations that the Federal Reserve could consider raising interest rates as early as July. Warsh, who succeeded Jerome Powell as Fed Chair, has indicated that he may adopt a different approach to forward guidance by reducing the amount of policy direction provided to financial markets.
Big Tech's first half was a story of hardware versus software
Amazon (AMZN), Google (GOOG, GOOGL), Meta, and Microsoft are expected to spend roughly $725 billion this year on capital expenditures, with the majority of that going to AI infrastructure. Look at Micron, for instance. In its latest quarter, it reported a 345% increase in revenue to $41.4 billion and earnings per share that blasted higher 1,214% to $25.11.
Jefferies warns against buying the dip in Circle as Open USD raises new competition fears
Circle (CRCL) shares bounced 5% Wednesday after a 17% plunge, as investors are weighing whether the new Open USD stablecoin consortium backed by Stripe, Mastercard, Coinbase and BlackRock poses a lasting threat to the USDC issuer. Global brokerage Jefferies isn't convinced the selloff has fully priced in the risks, arguing that Circle faces mounting competitive pressure as banks, payment firms and fintechs increasingly launch their own stablecoins. "CRCL headwinds are unlikely to ease," analysts wrote, warning that competition could pressure USDC's supply growth and market share. The authors argued that Circle, which holds roughly 25% of the $300 billion stablecoin market, is moving into a more competitive phase. While USDC benefited from an early lead after launching in 2018, Jefferies said new entrants now have something Circle lacked in its early years: large built-in distribution networks. The launch of Open USD, backed by more than 140 companies including Stripe, Coinbase, Visa, Mastercard and BlackRock, points that shift. The consortium plans to share reserve income with participating companies, potentially making the platform more attractive to payment providers and fintechs. Jefferies analysts also flagged Coinbase's participation as a new risk. Circle derives about 95% of its revenue from interest earned on USDC reserves and relies heavily on Coinbase as its largest distribution partner. The companies' commercial agreement is reportedly up for renewal in August. While the brokerage doesn't view Coinbase joining Open USD as a sign it's abandoning USDC, it said the exchange could eventually promote competing stablecoins, weighing on USDC's growth. Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire pushed back against the competitive narrative in a lengthy post on X Wednesday, arguing that stablecoins are ultimately network businesses built over years rather than products that can be replicated overnight. He pointed to USDC's ecosystem of thousands of integrations, deep liquidity across exchanges and decentralized finance protocols and regulatory approvals in markets including Europe and Japan as advantages that would be difficult for newcomers to match. He also disputed one of Open USD's central selling points: sharing reserve income with partners. Circle already shares the majority of its income with distribution partners, he said, while retaining enough revenue to keep investing in infrastructure. "Giving away all the income is a recipe for starving an infrastructure," Allaire wrote. He was also skeptical of the consortium model itself. "Large groups of large companies coordinate poorly, have misaligned incentives, slow things down and rarely create the space for real durable innovation," he wrote. That skepticism is shared by Lorenzo Valente, director of digital asset research at ARK Invest, who noted that crypto has seen several consortium-backed stablecoin initiatives over the years, including Meta's Diem project and Paxos-led Global Dollar Network. "Every year we get our consortium-style initiative around a stablecoin," Valente wrote in an X post. "While the set of players here is obviously potent, I remain highly skeptical any of these initiatives can hit scale." He said Open Standard's biggest challenge may be coordinating more than 140 participants with competing interests. "A consortium of hundreds of rivals has no precedent for working," he said. "The pace of decision-making across competitors is going to be glacial."
Trump Just Called Micron the ‘Hottest’ Company in the World. The Market Yawned and Dumped It 10%
Micron came into today priced for something close to perfection. The stock is up 754% over the past year and 227% year to date, with a market cap sitting around $1.17 trillion. The Q3 fiscal 2026 earnings report on June 24 was that reason, and it already ran. Revenue landed at $41.456 billion, up 345.72% year over year, beating consensus by 17.60%. Non-GAAP EPS came in at $25.11 against a $20.28 estimate, the seventh consecutive beat. Management guided Q4 to $50 billion in revenue and $31.00 in EPS. Micron is also holding $22 billion in customer cash deposits and letters of credit against take-or-pay commitments. HBM4 shipments have already crossed $1 billion, and Mehrotra said the ramp is tracking twice as fast as HBM3E 12-high. Micron’s fundamental case is intact, arguably strengthened, by the Q3 results and the SCA structure.
BYD set to again overtake Tesla as top electric car seller
BYD delivered 557,090 battery-electric vehicles in Q2, according to figures released Wednesday. Tesla is expected to report quarterly sales of approximately 396,500 vehicles next week. BYD first surpassed Tesla in the fourth quarter of 2024 and maintained its lead through 2025.
Nebius, Coreweave, and IREN Tumble on Meta’s Cloud Ambitions. Is This the End of the Neocloud Boom?
Annual AI infrastructure spending by the major hyperscalers is approaching $750 billion, as they, startups, and governments compete for compute power. Meta has indicated it expects to build tens of gigawatts of AI capacity over time. The risks include: AI demand slowing before capacity investments generate returns
This AI Infrastructure Company Has a $638 Billion Backlog and Is Trading Near an 18-Month Low
Oracle reported $638 billion in remaining performance obligations, or RPO, in its most recent quarterly report. RPO is Oracle's term for contracted future revenue, or backlog, and this figure is 363% higher than it was a year ago. For context, this is now larger than the backlog of much larger tech company Microsoft (MSFT +2.95%).
Daiwa Moves PDD Holdings (PDD) to Hold
PDD Holdings Inc. (NASDAQ:PDD) is one of the 10 Fastest Growing Asian Stocks to Buy Now. On June 24, 2026, Daiwa downgraded PDD Holdings Inc. (NASDAQ:PDD) to Hold from Buy with a price target of $80, down from $145. Daiwa said China's 2026 6.18 shopping festival "delivered a negative surprise," with overall gross merchandise value up only 0.9% year-over-year versus a 15% increase in 2025, according to Syntun. The firm said the data confirms a "weak" e-commerce consumption trend in China and cited a "tough" macro backdrop, tightening regulations, a scaled-back national trade-in program, and a high base as limits on sector growth.