The S&P 500 ekes out a gain with almost no help from megacap tech

Sandisk is up 3% in premarket trading on Thursday after it began its global standardization strategy of high-bandwidth flash (HBF) memory solutions with SK Hynix.

SK Hynix commented in a press release on Thursday that “by making HBF an industry standard, together with Sandisk, we will lay the foundation for the entire AI ecosystem to grow together,” adding that the companies will set up a dedicated workstream to work on the standardization under the Open Compute Project, the world’s largest organization dealing with data center technologies.

First debuted last February, Sandisk’s HBF technology lies in between ultrafast high-bandwidth memory (HBM) and high-capacity SSDs. That is, these have more storage capacity than HBMs, but are still fast enough to be utilized in AI inferencing (albeit not as quick as HBM).

Sandisk has previously argued that this hybrid architecture is central to AI services that need user applications but require a significant amount of fast interconnect between GPUs. The latest announcement also notes that HBF technology is expected to be more cost-efficient compared to alternatives of similar scale.

The launch, which was shared in an kickoff event on Thursday evening, starts SK Hynix and Sandisk’s workflow, which was announced when the two companies signed a memorandum of understanding “to standardize the specification, define technology requirements and explore the creation of a technology ecosystem” last August, per Sandisk’s press release at the time. Ultimately, by collaborating with SK Hynix, one of the three key HBM suppliers, to standardize and commercialize the technology, Sandisk is manufacturing somewhat of a first-mover advantage to offer the system-level “AI-optimized memory architecture” required for AI inference markets, rather than focusing on the performance of a single chip element.

Warner Bros. Discovery reported its fourth-quarter earnings before the market opened on Thursday. The results come as the company finds itself in the middle of a still-hot bidding war between Netflix and Paramount. Its shares were flat in premarket trading.

In the three months ended in December, WBD reported:

• A loss of $0.10 per share, deeper than the $0.03 loss expected by analysts polled by FactSet.

• Total revenue of $9.46 billion, ahead of the $9.35 billion consensus.

Warner Bros.’ cable business booked $4.2 billion in revenue, beating estimates of $4.04 billion but down 12% from last year. The division is a key difference between the Netflix and Paramount acquisition offers: Netflix is seeking to acquire everything except Warner’s cable networks, while Paramount is seeking to purchase WBD in its entirety.

Industry analysts mostly view WBD’s cable networks as being worth between $2 and $4 per share, and Paramount’s most recent bid is $3.25 per share more than Netflix’s. Paramount has said its own analysis values Warner’s cable division at $0 per share.

WBD said it would not answer any questions about the two proposals on Thursday’s earnings call, but noted the following about Paramount’s recent offer:

“There can be no assurance that the Board will conclude that the transaction proposed by PSKY is superior to the merger with Netflix or that any definitive agreement or transaction will result from Warner Bros. Discovery’s discussions with PSKY.”