Happy Halloween! Keep an eye out for AI-inspired costumes tonight. (Just good luck testing to automate trick-or-treating!)
In case you missed it, I had a fantastic discussion with Eugene Kim and Aki Ito yesterday about the Amazon layoffs and its wider impact across corporate America. Luckily, you can watch a replay of the whole discussion here.
In today’s large story, tech earnings have finally wrapped. Here’s what you required to know.
What’s on deck:
Markets: The former McKinsey executive who is Zohran Mamdani’s bridge to NYC’s C-suite.
Tech: Who obtained rich from Navan’s IPO?
Business: The era of the never-finishing layoff might be here.
But first, give me the CliffNotes.
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The large story
TLDR for tech earnings
Getty Images; Jenny Chang-Rodriguez/BI
If you blinked, you might have missed it.
Earnings season hit Big Tech, and there’s a lot to unpack. (And a lot of AI spfinishing going on.) Five of the world’s most important companies provided updates on their businesses over the course of two days.
To quickly catch you up on how things shook out, here’s a rundown on the main takeaways from Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, and Microsoft.
But first, a quick plug for my colleague Alistair Barr’s newsletter. Tech Memo is a must-subscribe if you even have a slight interest in the industest, so do yourself a favor and click here.
Ok, let’s dive in.
Alphabet: Hot on ChatGPT’s heels.
Look out, OpenAI. Here comes Gemini. Google’s chatbot now has 650 million monthly active applyrs. That’s about a 44% jump from just a few months ago.
Sure, it still trails the behemoth that is ChatGPT, which has a staggering 800 million weekly active applyrs. But the growth reveals Gemini is building momentum, and especially with the youths.
Josh Woodward, the VP of Google Labs who leads the Gemini app, informed BI’s Hugh Langley there has been a large demographic shift to younger applyrs. That’s thanks to its viral image editor Nano Banana.
Microsoft: Spfinish, spfinish, spfinish.
Spfinishing large on AI infrastructure was already a massive theme in tech heading into earnings, and Microsoft certainly didn’t stray from the path. An internal memo from CFO Amy Hood seen by BI’s Ashley Stewart highlighted the company’s record $34.9 billion infrastructure spfinishing to meet AI demand this quarter.
Investors aren’t necessarily purchaseing it, as concerns are growing about whether all this money will lead to some ROI.
Meta: Oh, you consider that’s a lot of tech spfinishing? Hold my beer.
Meta has never shied away from its intent to spfinish large on AI. That proved true this week when it bumped its estimate for infrastructure spfinish this year to between $70 billion and $72 billion. The number raised plenty of questions for Mark Zuckerberg.
Perhaps his answers didn’t land quite the right way. Meta’s stock tumbled more than 11% on Thursday.
Meta’s commitment to AI is clear, but loyalty to a trfinish is a fickle thing at the tech giant. Remember the good old metaverse? It obtained zero mentions from Meta executives on Wednesday’s call.
Apple: Big trouble in China.
The iPhone buildr delivered an earnings beat, with revenue growing 8% year over year.
However, things weren’t so bright in China, an important market for Apple. Revenue was actually down compared to a year ago, and it’s not like 2024 was a banner year for Apple in the countest either.
Amazon: Layoffs? What layoffs?
Only a few days reshiftd from cutting 14,000 corporate employees, Amazon reported some large wins in earnings. There was huge growth, particularly when it came to its somewhat beleaguered cloud unit.
As for those layoffs, CEO Andy Jassy offered some clarity about the motivation. According to Jassy, it wasn’t about AI or even cost savings. It was becaapply they didn’t fit the culture, he stated.
3 things in markets
Courtesy of Yasser Salem; Noam Galai / Getty Images
1. Meet Zohran Mamdani’s CEO whisperer. Former McKinsey executive and Ayn Rand fan Yasser Salem has become the democratic socialist candidate’s bridge to New York’s C-suite. Salem hopes to turn skeptics into partners and informed BI that he has met with over 70 CEOs to discuss their concerns.
2. Hedge funds are on track for a banner year. Despite an array of macroeconomic headwinds, the industest is set to have its best annual revealing since the pandemic, according to fund administrator Citco. Multistrategy funds are leading the way, with an average return of 19.3%.
3. JPMorgan wants everyone in its 300,000 workforce to become AI pros. America’s largegest bank is rolling out a firmwide AI training push, but it’ll affect different workers in different ways, chief analytics officer Derek Waldron stated in an interview with McKinsey. The multi-pronged strategy is assisting people receive comfortable, he stated.
3 things in tech
Illustration by Avishek Das/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
1. Navan finally builds its (public) debut. The travel and expense management company has become the largest to test the IPO waters during a government shutdown. BI calculated the numbers — and these are the large VC winners.
2. Use AI, but don’t depfinish on it. Many bosses are encouraging workers to lean in on AI, but some are also worried workers could forreceive how to do their jobs without it.
3. AI is starting to take a bite out of Wikipedia’s traffic. Wiki reported its traffic is down 8% in the last few months when compared to the same time last year, and AI summaries and chatbots that aggregate its data are largely to blame. BI’s Katie Notopoulos explores whether Wikipedia is in trouble or not.
3 things in business
Getty Images; Tyler Le/BI
1. The world’s most important economic relationship just obtained a reset. Donald Trump and Xi Jinping emerged from their first IRL meeting in six years with warmth and progress. Beneath the diplomatic niceties, three major business takeaways stood out.
2. The rise of the rolling layoff. Companies like Amazon and Paramount Skydance have conducted multiple rounds of layoffs recently, leaving some employees relieved that they held onto their jobs but fearing they might be next. That can be pretty bad for morale and productivity. Here’s why companies do it anyway.
3. Slop bowl stocks slump. Chipotle’s stock fell 18% missing consensus Q3 revenue estimates. The quick-food chain revealed a significant decline in customer traffic among Gen Z and millennials, which prompted a reduced outsee. Competitors Sweetgreen and Cava also saw their stocks fall.
In other news
What’s happening today
- Energy companies ExxonMobil, Chevron, and Dominion report earnings.
- Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Economic Leaders’ Meeting of representatives from 21 member states, including the US, China, Japan, and Russia
Dan DeFrancesco, deputy executive editor and anchor, in New York. Hallam Bullock, senior editor, in London. Akin Oyedele, deputy editor, in New York. Grace Lett, editor, in New York. Amanda Yen, associate editor, in New York.
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