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Nebius soars after signing AI infrastructure deal with Meta worth up to $27 billion over 5 years

Nebius is skyrocketing in early trading on Monday, up nearly 14% as of 8 a.m. ET, after the Amsterdam-based company announced a new five-year deal with Meta worth as much as $27 billion.

The social media giant will initially buy dedicated AI computing capacity across multiple locations for $12 billion, which will be one of the first large-scale deployments of the NVIDIA Vera Rubin platform, according to the company’s press release, with delivery beginning in early 2027.

Meta will also buy an additional $15 billion worth of Nebius’ planned capacity if it’s not sold to other customers over the same five-year period.

Nebius added in the press release that its guidance for 2026, in which the company is forecasting an annualized revenue run rate of $7 billion to $9 billion, per its Q4 earnings results, remains unchanged, signaling that the gains from the new deal will likely start rolling in after this fiscal year. This latest deal with Meta, which adds to their previous $3 billion deal announced in November, also notably relies on its partnership with another Big Tech company, Nvidia, which recently invested another $2 billion in Nebius.

This news of another major hyperscaler deal is sparking a bid for many of the other so-called neocloud companies, like CoreWeave, IREN, Applied Digital, Cipher Digital, and Riot Platforms, which also sell hardware and cloud capacity to AI infrastructure-obsessed tech giants.

For Meta, the deal underscores the company’s current financial focus: capital is to be used to expand in AI as quickly as possible, but spending in other areas is to be more cautious. Over the weekend, Reuters reported that the company was looking at layoffs that could affect more than 20% of its staff.

So far, dropping tens of billions of dollars on talent and compute capacity hasn’t catapulted Meta to the top of the AI leaderboards — just last week, The New York Times reported that the company was delaying the release of its Avocado model because it simply wasn’t good enough.

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Lululemon’s stretch getting tested: Stock plunges after after outlook is cut

Lululemon shares are down double digits in premarket trading after the company cut its full-year sales and profit outlook, overshadowing a Q1 beat and raising fresh concerns about the brand’s turnaround efforts.

The company now expects fiscal 2026 revenue to be flat to down 1%, compared with its prior forecast for 2% to 4% growth. Guidance for full-year diluted earnings per share was dragged down to a range of $10.95 to $11.15, below the company’s previous guidance of $12.10 to $12.30 and well below Wall Street’s estimate of $13.26.

Key numbers for Q1:

  • EPS of $1.69 vs. the $1.68 expected.

  • Revenue of $2.47 billion vs. the $2.43 billion expected.

The modest top-line beat masked a widening divergence between Lululemons geographic markets. While international revenue rose 22% overall with a 30% increase in Mainland China, the bigger problem remains North America, where revenue fell 5%.

Interim co-CEO and CFO Meghan Frank acknowledged during the earnings call that recent product rollouts underperformed. A highly anticipated yoga campaign failed to generate its expected halo effect across broader product lines.

Profitability metrics took a major hit, with gross margins contracting by 410 basis points to 54.2% due to mounting tariff costs and promotional markdowns. Operating income consequently fell 37% year over year to $276.9 million.

“We experienced spikes of negative commentary in the media and on social channels with regard to our brand, which had an impact on traffic and overall top-line performance,” Frank said during the earnings call. “And second, not all of our product launches have met our expectations. While we have had several successful launches so far this year, we have seen others as we start Q2 not generate the anticipated guest response.”

Lululemons valuation has already been steadily compressing for years. While it was once one of retails richly valued stocks, investors have been questioning whether the company can return to the double-digit growth era.

The results also arrive during a leadership transition. Lululemon announced back in April that former Nike executive Heidi ONeill is set to take over as CEO in September, with investors looking to her to revive growth in North America and restore the brands growth.

As Lululemon faces both macroeconomic pressure and brand-specific challenges, its stock has dropped around 40% year to date.

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US job growth skyrocketed in May, blasting past expectations

The US economy added 172,000 jobs in the month of May, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Friday, sending 10-year Treasury yields higher.

The strong May job market surprised economists. Experts had predicted only 85,000 new jobs — just half the reported number. The unemployment rate held steady at 4.3%, as expected.

The job growth story is a hopeful spot for the economy as consumers continue to feel inflationary pressure from the Iran war.

Job gains were buoyed by the leisure and hospitality sector, which added 70,000 jobs, as well as local government, healthcare, and education.

Both the March and April jobs reports were revised upward, making them collectively 93,000 higher than previously reported.

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