“We continue to remain confident in the long-term vision that RIVN is amid a massive transformation,” Wedbush Securities’ Dan Ives wrote in a fresh note on Friday. The firm maintained its $25 price target and “outperform” outlook and said that the launch of Rivian’s upcoming lower-cost SUV, the R2, is “crucial.”

Rivian received upgrades from Deutsche Bank (to “buy” from “hold”) and UBS (to “neutral” from “sell”) following its results.

On its Thursday earnings call, Rivian said it expects its delivery volume of its existing vehicle lineup to land “roughly in line with... 2025 total volumes.” Given the automaker’s full-year delivery guidance, that statement implies 2026 R2 deliveries to land between 20,000 and 25,000 units.

Self-driving features also appear to be boosting investor optimism. On Thursday’s earnings call, CEO RJ Scaringe said the company would enable “point-to-point” driving in its vehicles later this year. In a podcast interview released Thursday, Scaringe predicted that by 2030, it will be “inconceivable to buy a car and not expect it to drive itself.” Rivian is targeting “a little sooner than that,” he added.

Rivian shares are also likely benefiting from something of a snapback: before the release of its Q4 results, Rivian shares had been hammered recently, down 38% since their recent high in December.

Liddel is an seasoned executive who previously served as CFO for Microsoft, GM, and International Paper.

Liddel also comes with experience in government, having served as the deputy White House chief of staff during the first Trump administration.

Ties to the Trump world could be helpful for Anthropic as it pushes to enter the public market. It’s reportedly not on the greatest terms with the current administration, as the startup has pushed back on using its Claude AI for surveillance applications.

Now, according to an internal memo reviewed by the Times, Meta seems to feel that it’s at least found the right moment, noting that the fraught and crowded political climate could allow the feature to attract less scrutiny.

“We will launch during a dynamic political environment where many civil society groups that we would expect to attack us would have their resources focused on other concerns,” the document reads.

The tech, called “Name Tag” internally, would let smart glass wearers identify and surface information about people they see with the glasses by using Meta’s artificial intelligence assistant.

“This is finally the narrative-changing quarter that we have been waiting for,” wrote Needham & Co. analyst Charles Shi, who boosted his price target to $440 from $390. “With AMAT shaking off the bad China narrative and returning to a strong AI-driven beat-and-raise cycle, we expect AMAT valuation gap vs. peers will narrow as AMAT should re-rate higher.”

The numbers speak for themselves, but the words on the conference call didn’t hurt either.

“Management’s decidedly more constructive tone on the call (relative to a more muted/conservative tone on the last call) we think was underpinned by a sharp acceleration in customer orders and activity levels in the quarter,” wrote JPMorgan analyst Harlan Sur, who lifted his price target to $400 from $260.

He spotlighted the strong outlook for its advanced packaging business given “AMAT’s #1 position in HBM where spending is inflecting higher as the absorption of previously shipped equipment concludes and additional capacity/capability is required amid burgeoning demand growth and customers’ rapid technology transitions (HBM3e > HBM4 > HBM4e and beyond).”

Other sell-side shops that took a more more optimistic view and upped their price targets include:

• Keybanc, up to $450 from $380;

• Barclays, up to $450 from $360;

• Wells Fargo, up to $435 from $350;

• Citi, up to $420 from $400;

• Morgan Stanley, up to $420 from $364;

• And Mizuho, up to $410 from $370.