Carnival Mardi Gras cruise ship departs from Port Canaveral (Paul Hennessy/Getty Images)

Carnival shares glide higher as the cruise giant orders $2 billion worth of new ships

The world’s largest cruise operator is beefing up its fleet as it rides a wave of record bookings.

4/8/25 11:46AM

Carnival shares jumped as much as 7% in Tuesday’s market rally, snapping a recent losing streak as travel stocks bounce back from consumer spending jitters.

The bounce comes a day after Carnival announced a $2 billion order for two new ships for its German brand AIDA Cruises — the most popular cruise line in that country. The new midsize vessels, built by Italian shipbuilder Fincantieri, are set for delivery in 2030 and 2032. Carnival is sailing with its largest fleet ever of 29 ships and plans to introduce five more by 2028.

The big ship buy comes just weeks after Carnival sailed past Q1 estimates with record profits, but issued a softer full-year outlook, sending shares lower. Still, the cruise operator is expanding its fleet as it scores record bookings, fueled by a mix of first-time guests, brand switchers, and loyal customers willing to pay premium prices.

Rival cruise lines Royal Caribbean and Norwegian Cruise Line also jumped during the travel sector rally.

Nate Becker

10h

Paramount is doing everything except the one thing that could give its Warner Bros. bid a chance of success

Warner Bros. says “more than 93%” of its shareholders have rejected Paramount. That’s probably not going to change substantially unless Paramount boosts its offer.

Streamers continued retreating from original shows in 2025

The death of “peak TV” has not been exaggerated, per a new report from Luminate.

Max Knoblauch1/21/26

Retail display of Takis snack food in various spicy flavors in Target store, Queens, New York

America’s love for spicy food and mouth-tingling sauces has surged, but are we approaching “peak heat”?

Takis doesn’t think so, as it searches for a “Chief Intensity Officer.”

Claire Yubin Oh1/21/26

Tom Jones

reduced to tiers

1/21/26

Netflix made $1.5 billion from advertising last year, about 3% of its total revenue

The figure rose more than 2.5x last year, per the company.

Tom Jones1/20/26

OpenAI’s ARR reached over $20 billion in 2025, CFO says

Sam Altman’s $500 billion artificial intelligence behemoth hit a major financial milestone last year, according to a new blog post over the weekend from OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar, as the company confirmed it had hit a more than $20 billion annual revenue run rate at the end of 2025.

Elsewhere in the blog post, Friar spent time addressing the company’s shifting goals, referencing plans to “close the distance between where intelligence is advancing and how individuals, companies, and countries actually adopt and use it.” As has become customary in the AI company press release genre, the CFO was also keen to tout the unending growth of the business, writing:

“Both our Weekly Active User (WAU) and Daily Active User (DAU) figures continue to produce all-time highs. This growth is driven by a flywheel across compute, frontier research, products, and monetization.”
“Compute grew 3X year over year or 9.5X from 2023 to 2025: 0.2 GW in 2023, 0.6 GW in 2024, and ~1.9 GW in 2025.”

And, perhaps most importantly for current backers and those keeping an eye on the private company before its rumored mega IPO:

“Revenue followed the same curve growing 3X year over year, or 10X from 2023 to 2025: $2B ARR in 2023, $6B in 2024, and $20B+ in 2025. This is never-before-seen growth at such scale.”

That latest figure has certainly set tongues in the tech world wagging, just as the company announced it would begin rolling out ads to free and ChatGPT Go users. It also puts the chatbot giant a fair way ahead of competitors like Anthropic, the company behind Claude.

OpenAI Anthropic ARR race — Sherwood News

A business that scales with the value of intelligence

“Both our Weekly Active User (WAU) and Daily Active User (DAU) figures continue to produce all-time highs. This growth is driven by a flywheel across compute, frontier research, products, and monetization.”
“Compute grew 3X year over year or 9.5X from 2023 to 2025: 0.2 GW in 2023, 0.6 GW in 2024, and ~1.9 GW in 2025.”