Physical attacks on cryptocurrency holders keep ticking up
Google announces new models, glasses, agents, but investors are not impressed
Demis Hassabis, Google DeepMind’s CEO and founder, was also an early Anthropic investor
Applied Digital saw its price soar after hours on news of a long-term lease agreement with the same “investment-grade” hyperscaler it struck a similar deal with in April.
The additional lease for 15 years in a take-or-pay arrangement is valued at $7.5 billion, and could rise to $18.2 billion if all options are exercised, according to the company's announcement.
This latest contract would bring Applied Digital's total contracted lease revenue to $31 billion, or $73 billion if all options are taken up.
The company also crowed about passing 1 GW of contracted capacity as it lands a customer for its fourth AI factory campus. The customer in question is not named, nor the exact location, just that the campus is “located in a northern state.”
The additional lease for 15 years in a take-or-pay arrangement is valued at $7.5 billion, and could rise to $18.2 billion if all options are exercised, according to the company's announcement.
This latest contract would bring Applied Digital's total contracted lease revenue to $31 billion, or $73 billion if all options are taken up.
The company also crowed about passing 1 GW of contracted capacity as it lands a customer for its fourth AI factory campus. The customer in question is not named, nor the exact location, just that the campus is “located in a northern state.”
Is it a worse day to be an Intuit employee or an Intuit shareholder?
On Wednesday, the financial and business tech company announced third-quarter earnings and sweeping layoffs on the same day. The TurboTax parent company said it would cut 17% of its workers — approximately 3,000 people — to focus on its AI efforts, according to a memo obtained by Reuters.
The stock was down 3.8% during market hours. It dropped further when Intuit released third-quarter results after the bell showing the slowest year-over-year revenue growth since 2024, falling 10% after-hours.
Here are the numbers:
Q3 revenue of $8.56 billion (compared to analyst estimates of $8.54 billion).
Adjusted earnings per share of $12.80 (estimate: $12.54).
Raised full-year guidance for revenue of $21.34 billion to $21.37 billion (estimate: $21.24 billion).
“We delivered strong third-quarter results, driven by our AI-driven expert platform strategy,” said Sasan Goodarzi, chairman and CEO of Intuit. “As a result, we are raising our full-year revenue guidance for fiscal 2026.”
Shares of Intuit are down nearly 40% this year.
On Wednesday, the financial and business tech company announced third-quarter earnings and sweeping layoffs on the same day. The TurboTax parent company said it would cut 17% of its workers — approximately 3,000 people — to focus on its AI efforts, according to a memo obtained by Reuters.
The stock was down 3.8% during market hours. It dropped further when Intuit released third-quarter results after the bell showing the slowest year-over-year revenue growth since 2024, falling 10% after-hours.
Here are the numbers:
Q3 revenue of $8.56 billion (compared to analyst estimates of $8.54 billion).
Adjusted earnings per share of $12.80 (estimate: $12.54).
Raised full-year guidance for revenue of $21.34 billion to $21.37 billion (estimate: $21.24 billion).
“We delivered strong third-quarter results, driven by our AI-driven expert platform strategy,” said Sasan Goodarzi, chairman and CEO of Intuit. “As a result, we are raising our full-year revenue guidance for fiscal 2026.”
Shares of Intuit are down nearly 40% this year.
After weeks of uncertainty about what role if any the White House would play in overseeing the release of new foundation models, this week top AI companies have been briefed on its plans, according to a new report from The Information.
The planned executive order describes a voluntary plan in which the National Security Agency, Office of the National Cyber Director, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, and Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency will decide which models to review, per the report.
The plan is reportedly less strict than AI companies had feared, but it does call for a 90-day testing period before release, a window that is substantially longer than the 14-day window that the companies wanted.
The new order could be signed as soon as this week.
The planned executive order describes a voluntary plan in which the National Security Agency, Office of the National Cyber Director, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, and Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency will decide which models to review, per the report.
The plan is reportedly less strict than AI companies had feared, but it does call for a 90-day testing period before release, a window that is substantially longer than the 14-day window that the companies wanted.
The new order could be signed as soon as this week.
Shares of T1 Energy are electric Wednesday afternoon, soaring more than 20% on record call volumes.
The stock had fallen over 13% at its lows on Tuesday after short-only fund Fuzzy Panda Research published a report calling the solar and battery storage company a “China Hustle” rather than a legitimate AI infrastructure investment, also alleging that the company has booked tax credits it won’t receive.
Retail traders have often used the dip that’s followed the announcement of a short report to load up on a company’s shares (see: POET Technologies in April).
Roth Capital Partners analyst Philip Shen responded to the report by calling T1 “a model for what the Trump administration may want in a domestic manufacturer that is transferring advanced technology and capacity to the US,” suggesting that the sell-off was a buying opportunity.
Earlier this week, T1 got an even more prominent vote of confidence when a 13F filing from Situational Awareness showed the hedge fund run by wunderkind Leopold Aschenbrenner held a 3.6% stake in the company at the end of Q1.
While investors are opting out of ETFs focused on the two largest cryptocurrencies, some are adding ETFs of alternative coins, chief among them being hype, the native token for Hyperliquid.
Digital asset managers 21shares and Bitwise rolled out hype ETFs last week and have yet to notch any outflows. Tuesday saw the highest level of inflows so far at over $11 million, outpacing XRP and solana ETFs’ combined inflow of nearly $5.3 million. Meanwhile, bitcoin and ethereum saw $393 million exit their funds yesterday, according to SoSoValue.
Bloomberg senior ETF analyst Eric Balchunas noted the 21shares Hyperliquid ETF “is growing volume each day since launch in the tens of millions now, 8x over day one, which is [a] really good sign of organic interest.”
The ETF flows coincide with the token’s outperformance, jumping 5.7% in the last 24 hours, 29.5% in the past seven days, and more than 100% year to date, data from CoinMarketCap shows. Bitcoin, ethereum, solana, and XRP are all down double digits in 2026.
Hype began trading a week after former SEC Chairman Gary Gensler announced ending his tenure, and has an all-time high price of $59.30, set in September 2025.
Hyperliquid, the perpetual futures exchange built on its own blockchain, gained traction among users who wanted to trade assets such as commodities, cryptocurrencies, and equities with leverage in hours when traditional venues are closed.
Treasury firm Hyperliquid Strategies has also rallied on news the SEC will soon greenlight trading tokenized versions of stocks.
Bitwise CIO Matt Hougan thinks investors are underestimating Hyperliquid’s impact and value. “The market is valuing Hyperliquid as a perpetual crypto futures exchange that happens to be growing quickly. But it should be valued as a global super-app covering all assets,” Hougan said in a Tuesday memo.
“Its addressable universe is not the $3 trillion crypto market, but the $600 trillion market for global assets. Those are two completely different businesses,” Hougan continued. “Today’s prices suggest you’re being offered the second at the cost of the first.”
Last week, Coinbase and Circle announced a new agreement with Hyperliquid. Coinbase became Hyperliquid’s official treasury deployer of Circle’s USDC on Hyperliquid, a move that translates to sharing around 90% of stablecoin reserve yield with the protocol.
99% of fees generated on Hyperliquid are dedicated to token buybacks, which, annualized, comes to $618 million, data from DefiLlama shows. The market capitalization of hype stands at $12.3 billion.
According to a report from The Wall Street Journal, OpenAI could file for an IPO as soon as this week. The company is working with Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley on the IPO, which is widely expected to be one of the largest ever. OpenAI is racing against rival Anthropic to be the first startup of the current generative-AI boom to go public.
OpenAI is targeting an IPO as soon as September, per the report.
Travel stocks are surging on Wednesday, with West Texas Intermediate crude futures down 5% as of 12 p.m. ET, largely on commodity traders’ hopes of a resolution to the US war with Iran.
The decline comes despite the US Energy Information Administration reporting a record plunge in US crude inventories last week. As the country expands its oil exports to reduce the impact of the war in Iran, inventories have fallen by 7.9 million barrels, according to the EIA, indicating a significant drop in domestic supply wiggle room ahead of the summer driving season. Per Reuters, analysts had expected a drop of 2.9 million.
Bloomberg noted that US oil exports have been crucial in keeping global petroleum prices in check, as supply remains historically constrained due to the effective closure of the Straight of Hormuz. Typically, such a sharper-than-expected drop in inventories would cause oil futures to rise.
Today, however, that is not the case and oil’s pain is travel stocks’ gain, with US airlines and cruise lines surging higher on Wednesday. Delta Air Lines, United Airlines, American Airlines, Southwest Airlines, and JetBlue were all up by at least 6%, while Carnival and Norwegian were up about 7%.
Royal Caribbean pared earlier losses from Mexico’s rejection of a large planned water park, but was still down about 1%.
Micron shares are climbing early Wednesday, breaking a sharp multiday semiconductor pullback. The rally comes amid the potential for a critical supply-side disruption at one of its largest global competitors, Samsung Electronics, as well as building investor enthusiasm ahead of Nvidia’s highly anticipated earnings report.
As demand for AI compute accelerates, Micron is increasingly viewed as a top-tier beneficiary due to its role in the critical high-bandwidth memory (HBM) market. The operational catalyst sparking Micron’s rally is a massive looming labor dispute in South Korea. According to Reuters, roughly 48,000 Samsung workers are set to begin an 18-day strike Thursday after negotiations broke down.
As global HBM production is effectively controlled by Micron, Samsung Electronics, and SK Hynix, any manufacturing hiccup at Samsung shifts pricing leverage to Micron. This backdrop comes as South Korea’s broader chip ecosystem is benefiting from the global infrastructure boom, pushing the country to the seventh-largest stock market in the world.
Micron has been expanding its own AI memory footprint. In March, the company completed its acquisition of PSMC’s Tongluo P5 site, a strategic integration designed to scale its domestic HBM production capacity and meet accelerating hyperscaler demand.
Target shares are sinking in volatile early Wednesday trading, erasing its premarket gains as investor anxiety over rising corporate overhead and tightening profit margins appeared to overawe strong Q1 earnings results that beat Wall Street estimates.
Key numbers:
Revenue of $25.44 billion (estimate: $24.11 billion).
Adjusted earnings per share of $1.71 (estimate: $1.43).
Same-store sales growth of 5.6% (estimate: 1.85%).
Target’s headline numbers signaled a clear, if partial, comeback story with 6.7% net sales growth, breaking a yearlong slump. The company also raised its full-year sales growth forecast to 4.0% compared with 2025, double its previous forecast of 2% growth. The company now projects annual EPS to land at the high end of its $7.50 to $8.50 range, beating the $8.10 consensus estimate from Wall Street.
However, Target’s operational expenses climbed to 21.9% of its total revenue last quarter, up from last year, with the company citing “higher compensation costs” and “higher marketing expense” to explain the jump. These rising costs were only partially offset by the boost from Target’s strong sales growth.
“While we have momentum, we’re also being cautious about the near-term operating environment,” said Michael Fiddelke, CEO of Target. “With consumers weighing multiple headwinds and tailwinds, and recent dips in consumer sentiment, we continue to place a premium on flexibility, not wanting to swing too hard too quickly, despite the early signs of momentum we’re seeing.”
This is the first earnings report under the newly appointed CEO, who officially took the helm in February and who’s focused on enhancing operational efficiency amid a prolonged retail sales slump.
Target yesterday announced that it tapped former Walmart exec Jeff England as chief supply chain officer to optimize inventory and delivery, part of a wider $6 billion turnaround. The retailer is also overhauling its beauty, baby, and apparel categories through exclusive Parke and “Pokémon” partnerships, though margins remain sensitive to inventory markdowns and labor costs.
Roblox rallied in postmarket trading on Tuesday after unveiling its first-ever share repurchase program.
The somewhat controversial, but certainly popular, gaming company has put forth a plan for $3 billion in future stock buybacks, with the intention to back up to $1 billion over the next 12 months. The stock subsequently jumped 4% after-hours.
On Tuesday, Naveen Chopra, chief financial officer of Roblox, said:
“Investing in continued growth will always be our highest priority, but the strength of our balance sheet and free cash flow generation allows us to support industry leading innovation while simultaneously reducing dilution.”
As of Q1 2026, Roblox had $6.2 billion in total cash, cash equivalents, and investments (for a net $5.2 billion after subtracting its $1.0 billion in debt). The company posted a consolidated net loss of $248 million in Q1.
While management has the cash on hand for a $3 billion buyback, the stock been taking hits recently — falling 28% over the past month (and 45% since the beginning of the year) as the company adjusts its safety standards. In April, the video game company slashed its full-year guidance due to age verification hurdles, which have slowed growth.
Cava jumped 8% after the bell on Tuesday after the fast-casual Mediterranean restaurant chain was able to bring in more customers and drive up more revenue than expected in the first quarter, with management signaling that this momentum is poised to continue.
Here are the numbers:
Q1 revenue of $434.4 million (compared to analyst estimates of $418.2 million).
Q1 adjusted EBITDA of $61.7 million (estimate: $57.3 million).
Full-year guidance for same-restaurant sales growth of 4.5% to 6.5%, up from its prior guidance of 3% to 5% and above estimates for 4.95%.
The company also posted traffic growth of 6.8% — blowing away salad competitor Sweetgreen’s traffic decrease of 11.2% in the first quarter.
“We’re creating a bit of a bridge in a K-shaped economy and becoming very accessible for the low-income cohorts,” CFO Tricia Tolivar told Restaurant Dive. “When we look at our restaurant stratified based on median household income, we’re seeing tremendous strength in the lower-income cohorts.”
The performance of these fast-casual establishments (or slop bowl chains) has been a way to keep an eye on our increasingly unequal economy. Interestingly, as especially younger consumers seem to be pulling back, at some of these restaurants, Cava continues to perform well.