Andrew here. If there was any doubt about the tech giants’ business strategy to spend heavily, this week’s earning reports suggest it will continue apace — at least for now. We drill into the numbers below.
We’re also assessing what’s missing from the trade truce between the U.S. and China, and the last-minute surge in money from New York’s business community to back Andrew Cuomo in next week’s mayoral election. We also speak with Oura’s C.E.O. about how he’s using A.I.
Amazon calms the market
The artificial intelligence rally is storming back on Friday on renewed hopes that Big Tech’s gigantic investments in A.I. are paying off.
The focus is on Apple and Amazon, whose strong quarterly results Thursday are propelling Nasdaq Composite Index futures higher.
The fortunes of both businesses are being closely watched, especially for what they say about how corporate America and consumers are faring amid President Trump’s trade war. Amazon’s bullish take on A.I. growth also calmed investors’ nerves.
Let’s start there. Amazon shares, which have lagged the company’s so-called Magnificent Seven peers all year, rose more than 12 percent in premarket trading. The e-commerce giant blew past Wall Street estimates, buoyed by growth in its consumer and cloud businesses.
The big takeaways:
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Sales topped $180 billion last quarter, and its profit soared 38 percent, to $21.2 billion.
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Revenues for the Amazon Web Services cloud business, a major profit driver, reached $33 billion for the quarter, up 20 percent from a year earlier. Andy Jassy, Amazon’s C.E.O., said the division “is growing at a pace we haven’t seen since 2022.”
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The company spent more than $34 billion on capital expenditures last quarter. Amazon is on track to exceed $125 billion in capital exenditure investments for the year, mostly on data centers that power cloud computing and A.I.
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Rufus, its shopping chatbot, is on pace to generate an additional $10 billion in sales this year, alleviating some doubts about the company’s ability to monetize its A.I. investment.
Shares in Apple are also gaining. That is after the company gave an upbeat forecast for iPhone sales. It also notched $101.5 billion in revenues last quarter, a record, and a profit of $26.3 billion. On the downside, its China sales underwhelmed.
Investors have given Apple a pass so far on its more conservative A.I. strategy. That could change soon. “They have to show they have a plan to move the needle for the next few years with A.I.,” Thomas Plumb, president of Wisconsin Capital Management, told The Times.
Still, investors are feeling more optimistic. On Thursday, Meta shares plunged after the company reported lackluster quarterly results and rising costs. The company is committing billions — and reportedly plans to borrow billions more — to build data centers to power its A.I. ambitions. It’s part of a group of high-spending tech companies known as the hyperscalers, which are forecast to spend roughly $2.8 trillion in A.I.-related infrastructure investment through 2029, according to analysts at Citigroup.
HERE’S WHAT’S HAPPENING
The Jeffrey Epstein ordeal continues to hit the rich and powerful. Weeks after the convicted sex offender died in 2019, JPMorgan Chase alerted the U.S. government to huge money flows that were potentially suspicious transactions involving Epstein and prominent Wall Street and business figures, The Times reports. Prince Andrew, a member of Britain’s royal family, is also facing more blowback from his ties to the disgraced financier: Buckingham Palace announced that he would be stripped of his royal title and evicted from his sprawling residence.
Netflix reportedly hires a bank to explore a bid for parts of Warner Bros. Discovery. The company has hired Moelis & Company, the investment bank that advised Skydance Media on a bid for Paramount, to evaluate its possible offer for Warner Bros. Discovery’s Hollywood studio and streaming business, according to Reuters. Neither company commented on the report, but Netflix’s C.E.O., Ted Sarandos, has said the streaming giant has no interest in Warner Bros. Discovery’s cable TV networks.
China’s factory production shows more signs of weakness. Manufacturing activity in China’s factories fell again in October, making the slump the longest in more than nine years. The cut and delay in U.S. tariffs on Chinese goods announced after talks between President Trump and Xi Jinping, China’s leader, offers manufacturers hope for a surge in orders, but China’s economy will probably need more government stimulus to reverse the slowdown, analysts say.
Grading the Trump-Xi talks
Investors and business leaders are still piecing through the framework trade truce hammered out by President Trump and Xi Jinping of China on Thursday.
Trump hailed the talks as a victory, while China was more measured.
A recap: China agreed to buy millions of tons of U.S. soybeans and ease its toughest export restrictions on rare-earth metals. Among the U.S. concessions, Washington agreed to remove thousands of Chinese firms from a so-called entity list that restricts their access to advanced technology.
But several omissions stand out, Grady McGregor reports.
The artificial intelligence chips question: Semiconductors came up in talks with Xi, Trump said on Thursday, but there was no clear resolution on the more burning question of Nvidia’s future in China. The U.S. has long banned exports of the most advanced A.I. chips, including Nvidia’s Blackwell processors, to Chinese companies on national security grounds. Beijing in turn has instructed local companies to rely on domestically produced chips.
Before the talks, Trump suggested he would ease the ban — which Jensen Huang, Nvidia’s C.E.O., has argued hampers American A.I. development — helping to propel the company’s shares to a $5 trillion market valuation. Trump has embraced Huang since the start of his second term, seeing Nvidia as key to the U.S. dominating the A.I. marketplace.
But in the end, Trump said he told Xi the matter was “really between you and Nvidia, but we’re sort of the arbitrator or the referee.”
And then there is the matter of America’s overseas interests. Washington has been leaning on its allies to enforce its entity list and restrict Chinese firms from accessing advanced technology. They were probably blindsided to learn that the U.S. had agreed to suspend some of those restrictions for a year, analysts said.
“Any U.S. partner may be saying: You’re writing into our trade deals that we need to align with you on export controls. At the same time, you just reversed a major export control move,” Reva Goujon, a director at Rhodium Group, told DealBook.
What’s next? After a day digging through the details, analysts said the framework agreement was more of a temporary cease-fire than an endpoint in trade negotiations.
On the optimistic end, the trade truce will “lend some momentum to future dialogues,” Joe Mazur, a senior analyst at Trivium China, told DealBook. Others were not impressed. “This is a microdeal,” said Isaac Stone Fish, the C.E.O. of the business intelligence firm Strategy Risks. “It will not last.”
Big Money’s last-minute Cuomo push
There are just days to go until New York City’s mayoral election, and Zohran Mamdani maintains a double-digit lead over Andrew Cuomo in the polls.
But some of Cuomo’s backers, including Mike Bloomberg, are still throwing money behind Cuomo, New York’s former governor, Lauren Hirsch writes.
The big question: Will it be enough to derail Mamdani, the democratic socialist whose policies around taxes and rent control, have rattled New York’s business leaders?
“This election is very winnable for Andrew,” the financiers Ricky Sandler, Richard Mack and Marty Burger wrote in a new email to donors, obtained by The Times. “We need your help to close the gap!”
They said they planned to use remaining funds in a super PAC backing Cuomo for get-out-the-vote efforts. One target: older voters in the Bronx and Staten Island.
Bloomberg has also moved off the sidelines. The former New York City mayor on Wednesday donated $1.5 million to a super PAC supporting Cuomo’s bid. That’s after he spent more than $8 million on Cuomo’s failed bid to become the Democratic nominee. In September, as Mamdani became a clear front-runner in the polls, Bloomberg hosted him at his Midtown Manhattan headquarters.
But Bloomberg is all-in on Cuomo, saying he “has the experience and toughness to stand up for New Yorkers and get things done.”
Cuomo’s camp has been buoyed by reports of robust early voting turnout among older voters. Polls show this group is more likely to support Cuomo, who’s 67, than younger New Yorkers.
Burger, Mack and Sandler question the accuracy of the forecasts showing Mamdani with such a large lead. “We don’t believe the polls have been a good indicator of what will happen in this election and the early voting data is confirming that view,” they wrote in their latest email to donors.
Is it too late? Polymarket, the prediction markets platform, on Friday gave Mamdani 95 percent odds of winning. And DealBook heard from one recipient of a pitch from the pro-Cuomo PAC who said he was on the fence about donating to Cuomo, thinking his money would not be enough to sway the outcome.
Talking A.I. with the C.E.O. of Oura
Every week, we’re asking a chief executive how he or she uses generative artificial intelligence. Tom Hale, who leads the wearable technology company Oura Health, told DealBook he often asks a chatbot to prompt him instead of the other way around. His answers have been condensed and edited.
How do you personally use A.I.?
The thing that I’ve found most valuable is a tactic that was described to me by Geoff Woods, who wrote “The Ai-Driven Leader.” You set a context, you give it a role. For example, I’m the C.E.O. of Oura, and you’re Steve Jobs; then you say, “Ask me 10 questions about this topic.” After the interview, you say, “Based on my answers, give me a task to do.”
It was sort of a revelation because I was using it in this very typical way — as a tool to do things and do them faster. This way, I’m not just prompting the A.I., the A.I. is prompting me.
Have you given any directives to your companies or direct reports about what you want them to do with A.I.?
It’s more carrot than stick. I want to see you show me you have the ideas and the passion and the desire to use these tools in an interesting and novel way.
We’ve hired a group of people to be a center of excellence, to make sure we’re using the right tools and doing it with the right governance and respect for privacy. But it’s not that you have to go to the A.I. department to get some A.I. The center of excellence is there to say, “If you’re not thinking about this, you should.” Or, “Here’s a tool that we’re providing.”
It’s “let a thousand flowers bloom.”
THE SPEED READ
Deals
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N.B.A. owners gave the go-ahead for Mark Walter, the billionaire investor, to buy the Los Angeles Lakers in a sale valuing the team at $10 billion. (Sportico)
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CoreWeave’s $9 billion bid for Core Scientific was rejected by the data center company’s shareholders. (Bloomberg)
Politics, policy and regulation
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Gov. Gavin Newsom’s push to redistrict California has brought out an army of first-time donors, and Arnold Schwarzenegger is on a media blitz to stop him. (Politico, WSJ)
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“Palantir Says Top A.I. Engineers Stole Secrets for ‘Copycat’ Firm” (Bloomberg)
Best of the rest
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“Colleges Face a Financial Reckoning. The University of Chicago Is Exhibit A.” (WSJ)
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A tale of two palates: Jensen Huang, Nvidia’s C.E.O., downed beer and Korean fried chicken with the heads of Samsung and Hyundai in Seoul, while President Trump dined on U.S. beef and Thousand Island dressing during his Asia tour. (South China Morning Post, NYT)
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Andrew Ross Sorkin is a columnist and the founder of DealBook, the flagship business and policy newsletter at The Times and an annual conference.
Bernhard Warner is a senior editor for DealBook, a newsletter from The Times, covering business trends, the economy and the markets.
Sarah Kessler is the weekend edition editor of the DealBook newsletter and writes features on business.
Michael J. de la Merced has covered global business and finance news for The Times since 2006.
Niko Gallogly is a Times reporter, covering business for the DealBook newsletter.
Lauren Hirsch is a Times reporter who covers deals and dealmakers in Wall Street and Washington.
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