markets

8/15/25

Joby completes first test flight between US airports

Air taxi maker Joby Aviation announced Friday that it’s completed its first US test flight between two airports. Joby shares were up more than 9% in premarket trading but then gave that all back soon after the regular session started.

The company’s electric aircraft, or eVTOL, completed a trip between Marina and Monterey, California, in 12 minutes (including a five-minute hold pattern for air traffic). According to Airport Guide, the typical drive between the two locations without traffic would take about 11 minutes, which some Joby critics pointed out online. Per Google Maps, at roughly 8 a.m. PT, the trip would take half an hour by car.

Air taxi companies like Joby and rival Archer Aviation are racing to achieve FAA certification in order to launch their commercial flight services in the US. In its second-quarter earnings report, posted earlier this month, Joby said it’s 70% complete with the fourth stage in the five-stage certification process.

The company recently announced its plans to acquire the helicopter ride-share business of competitor Blade Air for $125 million, sending Joby shares surging.

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OpenAI’s cash burn suggests selling Nvidia because of reported Broadcom chip orders may not make much sense

When Broadcom announced that it booked $10 billion in new orders from a customer reported to be OpenAI, shares of their major AI chip rivals tanked.

The judgement of the Invisible Hand was that this was nearly a zero-sum outcome: $130 billion of market cap erased from Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices, and a $135 billion increase in Broadcom’s market value.

But looking at this from the perspective of near-term cash flows, the market’s view seems off.

The Information is reporting that OpenAI now expects to burn through $115 billion by the end of 2029 (or more than 11 seasons’ worth of NFL broadcasting rights).

Let’s zoom in on this tidbit from The Information:

But the biggest change emerging from OpenAI’s latest projections was to its cash flows. The company projected it will burn more than $8 billion this year, or roughly $1.5 billion higher than its prior projection from earlier this year. Cash burn will more than double to more than $17 billion next year—$10 billion higher than what the company earlier projected

That $10 billion fits all too neatly with the $10 billion in orders from a major new customer that Broadcom CEO Hock Tan pointed to in the chip designer’s earnings call.

(Cheers to @lokoyacap for flagging this on X)

Assuming the reporting around OpenAI and Broadcom is accurate, these orders for ASICs don’t look to be displacing what the ChatGPT creator was going to spend on Nvidia’s GPUs, but are just in addition to it! The money’s not coming out of Jensen Huang’s pockets, it’s coming out of OpenAI’s coffers. Their spending budget is just getting bigger.

Perhaps if you squint, there’s a world in which OpenAI may prefer to have an additional $10 billion in Nvidia GPUs rather than ASICs, and I am still of the belief that hyperscalers diversifying their chip sources due to constrained top-end supplies isn’t a good sign for the company selling the most in-demand product.

But it’s quite intriguing, and says something about the depth of the pockets that fuel the AI boom, that OpenAI’s reported new relationship with Broadcom has seemingly no direct negative financial impact on Nvidia in the near term.

markets

2h

Broadcom’s post-earnings romp continues on heavy volumes

As Broadcom enjoys a rush of new orders from a major new customer (reported to be OpenAI), it’s also reveling in a flood of traffic into the stock.

Volumes are running at 2.5 times their daily average through 1:20 p.m. ET as traders continue to bid up shares in response to the brighter outlook for 2026 revenues, which sent the stock up 9.4% on Friday.

The chip designer is basking in a flood of price target hikes from Wall Street, with Bank of America, JPMorgan, Argus Research, Citigroup, Bernstein, Deutsche Bank, Morgan Stanley, Barclays, Piper Sandler, Rosenblatt Securities, Wells Fargo, and Susquehanna upping their view on how high shares can go since the company reported earnings last week.

Separately, Taiwanese industry outlet DigiTimes is reporting that orders from several other leading tech companies for custom-made Broadcom chips (or ASICs) are “already in the pipeline.” This report has not been corroborated by our own or any other publication’s reporting to date.

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2h

SpaceX spectrum deal sends would-be rivals lower

Shares of struggling satellite services company EchoStar soared Monday, after the company — which had recently tottered close to bankruptcy — announced the sale of some of its wireless spectrum licenses to Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s SpaceX for $17 million.

The sale provides a competitive advantage to Musk’s growing Starlink satellite services business, as the licenses it is acquiring from Echostar allows Starlink to operate ground based broadband and cellphone services, the Wall Street Journal reported.

Entities that stood to be hurt by the emergence of a Musk-led SpaceX Starlink service got hit hard on the news. AST SpaceMobile, which has plans to offer a similar satellite-to-consumer cellular service, tumbled.

So did wireless tower providers like Crown Castle and American Tower. Low cost cellular service provider T-Mobile, which had a deal with SpaceX, also slumped, as Luke noted earlier, along with other large wireless telecommunication services providers.

The wireless telecommunications industry grouping within the S&P 500 was down more than 2.5% shortly after noon, making it the worst performing industry within the S&P 500 on Monday.

SpaceX strikes $17B deal to buy EchoStar's spectrum for Starlink's direct-to-phone service | TechCrunch

SpaceX strikes $17B deal to buy EchoStar's spectrum for Starlink's direct-to-phone service | TechCrunch

Entities that stood to be hurt by the emergence of a Musk-led SpaceX Starlink service got hit hard on the news. AST SpaceMobile, which has plans to offer a similar satellite-to-consumer cellular service, tumbled.

So did wireless tower providers like Crown Castle and American Tower. Low cost cellular service provider T-Mobile, which had a deal with SpaceX, also slumped, as Luke noted earlier, along with other large wireless telecommunication services providers.

The wireless telecommunications industry grouping within the S&P 500 was down more than 2.5% shortly after noon, making it the worst performing industry within the S&P 500 on Monday.

Robinhood, Amcor, Applovin surge on after being added to S&P 500

Robinhood, AppLovin vault higher as the "inclusion effect" is in full force

Membership has its privileges.

Matt Phillips5h

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J. Edward Moreno

5h

Hims rises, Novo dips after FDA releases “green list” of GLP-1 raw material suppliers

Hims & Hers rose and Novo Nordisk slipped in early trading after the US Food and Drug Administration released a "green list" of foreign GLP-1 ingredient suppliers that it considers in compliance with agency standards.

Some telehealth companies like Hims sell copycat versions of Novo's and Eli Lilly’s blockbuster weight-loss drugs through compounding pharmacies, which take the active ingredients from FDA-approved medications and make adjusted, or "personalized,” versions of the drug for patients.

Novo and Lilly have fought against this, arguing that it infringes on their intellectual property. They've sued smaller telehealth providers, pharmacies, and clinics in lieu of any action against them from the FDA. Instead, the FDA gave compounders a list of suppliers it deems safe.

Recent developments in the cases filed by the drugmakers so far as well as the FDA's recent actions suggest telehealth companies may be in a less risky position than investors previously thought. As of Monday morning, prediction markets pegged the likelihood of a suit from Novo against Hims at 34%, down from about 70% earlier this month.

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