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Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang interviews Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg at the 2024 SIGGRAPH conference in Denver, CO on July 29, 2024.
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Nvidia enhances partnership with social media giant Meta to deploy “millions” of its GPUs

Winners: Nvidia, Arm. Losers: AMD, Broadcom, Intel, Arista.

Meta is laying it out in no uncertain terms: its AI build-out will be brought to you by Nvidia.

In pair of press releases after the close on Tuesday, the social media giant and chip designer detailed a “multi-year, multi-generational strategic partnership” that “will enable the large-scale deployment of NVIDIA CPUs and millions of NVIDIA Blackwell and Rubin GPUs, as well as the integration of NVIDIA Spectrum-X Ethernet switches for Meta’s Facebook Open Switching System platform.”

There’s also a deeper integration with a very commonly used communications tool at play. “Meta has adopted NVIDIA Confidential Computing for WhatsApp private processing, enabling AI-powered capabilities across the messaging platform,” per the press release, with plans to add these capabilities to other use cases at the Mark Zuckerberg-led firm.

One obvious winner, of course, is Nvidia, as investors may now have a clearer line of sight to millions of GPU sales that include not only this generation, but future editions, as well. The inclusion of CPUs in this pact, and with an expanded role in data center environments, also appears to be boon for Arm Holdings, whose IP was utilized to develop these products.

Shares of Nvidia, Arm, and Meta rose in after-hours trading, albeit fairly modestly.

The losers?

Nvidia’s competitors in...

AI chips: Advanced Micro Devices and Broadcom, as the dominant incumbent’s big, long-term deal with a hyperscaler seemingly reduces their ability to gain market share.

CPUs: Intel (and AMD again!).

And an established Meta networking client: Arista Networks, which is seeing Nvidia muscle in on this territory.

Intel was roughly flat in after-hours trading on Tuesday, while the other three stocks fell.

“Metas partnership with Nvidia — spending tens of billions of dollars on its new family of GPUs and, more importantly, making the first major deployment of Nvidias stand-alone CPUs for backend CPU servers — suggests rising market share and associated average selling price gains for Arm,” wrote Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Oscar Hernandez Tejada. “Increasing server CPU share gains for Nvidia stand to aid Arms share growth against x86, posing a clear headwind for Intel.”

The press release did not spell out any contractual purchase obligations on Meta’s behalf, but is more of a statement of intent on how aligned the parties plan to be in attempting to deliver on the promise of the AI boom.

Ian Buck, vice president of accelerated computing at Nvidia, said the companies haven’t assigned a dollar value or timeline to this expanded partnership yet.

“While specifics of the deal are still unknown (value, power, etc), we view this announcement as another positive catalyst for NVDA into 2026 and beyond, reaffirming that hyperscaler propensity to spend on AI infrastructure remains strong and NVIDIA will be a primary beneficiary,” Needham & Co. analyst Quinn Bolton wrote.

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Carvana craters after Q4 earnings miss estimates

Used car retailer Carvana plummeted after fourth-quarter profits came in shy of estimates.

Adjusted EBITDA of $511 million came in below the consensus call for $535.7 million, more than offsetting better-than-expected sales of $5.6 billion (estimate: $5.27 billion).

Carvana sold 163,522 used vehicles to retail customers in the quarter, up 43% from last year and ahead of expectations. With that result, Carvana further closes its retail sales gap with rival CarMax, which sold 169,557 vehicles in its most recent quarter.

Carvana posted a retail gross profit per vehicle of $3,076, down 7.7% from the same period last year. In a letter to shareholders, Carvana said its reconditioning costs came in higher than expected in Q4, which led to an additional impact on retail gross profit per unit. Lower shipping fee revenue, higher non-vehicle costs, and higher industrywide retail depreciation rates also drove the decline, the company said.

Carvana said it expects to see elevated reconditioning costs again in the first quarter, but expects a sequential increase in retail GPU. Carvana said it expects “significant growth in both retail units sold and Adjusted EBITDA” in the first quarter and full year ahead.

As of Wednesday’s close, Carvana shares were down about 24% since an all-time closing high in January, after a report from short seller Gotham City questioning its accounting practices sent the stock reeling. A Carvana spokesperson told Sherwood News that the report was “inaccurate and intentionally misleading.”

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DoorDash reports earnings miss, underwhelming earnings guidance

DoorDash reported earnings results that missed Wall Street expectations and provided underwhelming earnings guidance Wednesday after the bell, which it attributed to harsh weather and increased spending.

For the final three months of 2025, DoorDash reported:

  • Earnings per share of $0.48, compared to the $0.59 analysts polled by FactSet were expecting.

  • Revenue of $3.9 billion, in line with the $3.9 billion analysts were penciling in.

  • Gross order value (the total amount spent on the platform) of $29.7 billion, compared to the $29.2 billion analysts were expecting.

For the current quarter, the company expects:

  • GOV between $31.0 billion and $31.8 billion, versus the $30.7 billion analysts are expecting.

  • Adjusted EBITDA between $675 million and $775 million, far below the $801.9 million analysts are expecting. The company said spending on Deliveroo, its recent UK acquisition, as well as extreme winter weather in the US are weighing on its profit guidance.

Shares fell as much as 11% in after-hours trading. The stock is down more than 20% so far this year.

DoorDash’s costs have gone up as it ramps up investment in autonomous delivery and international expansion, among other things. “This is a massive and expensive undertaking and honestly one you shouldn’t do if you thought your best days were behind you,” CEO Tony Xu said in a letter to shareholders.

Ethan Feller, a strategist at Zacks Investment Research, said the underlying business remains strong even if the stock faces pressure in the near term.

“None of these are structural issues, but soft guidance is soft guidance — and the market rarely gives credit for context when a stock is already under pressure,” he said.

markets

Figma spikes after reporting better-than-expected Q4 results, blowout Q1 and full-year sales guidance

Figma reported Q4 results that exceeded Wall Street’s expectations and robust sales guidance for the current quarter and full year.

Shares are spiking in after-hours trading.

For the final three months of 2025, the digital design and development platform company reported:

  • Revenue of $303.8 million, compared to the $293.1 million analysts were penciling in.

  • Adjusted earnings per share of $0.08, compared to the $0.07 analysts polled by Bloomberg expected.

For sales, management expects:

  • Q1 revenue between $315 million and $317 million (estimate: $293.6 million).

  • Full-year revenue between $1.366 billion and $1.374 billion (estimate: $1.29 billion).

The lower ends of these ranges are above the highest analyst sales estimates for both Q1 and 2026 as a whole.

This marks the company’s second earnings report since going public over the summer. Its share price has taken a hit this year alongside many of its software peers, and management will be looking to show that AI can be an accelerant, rather than a threat, to its business. On Tuesday, Figma announced a partnership with Anthropic to integrate AI coding tools.

“Our healthy balance sheet and positive free cash flow gives us the flexibility to continue investing in AI and the platform while maintaining financial discipline for sustainable, long-term growth,” CFO Praveer Melwani said in the press release.

As of the close on Wednesday, the stock was down 35% for the year and roughly 80% below its closing level at the time of its July IPO.

markets

Record labels dip as Google adds AI music generation to its Gemini app

Google on Wednesday said it’s rolling out the ability for Gemini app users aged 18 and up to generate 30-second AI music tracks.

The tool is available globally, as Google launches beta access to its Lyria 3 generative-AI music model.

Addressing the potential for skirting the lines of copyright law (as seen in other recent DeepMind AI tools), Google said:

“If your prompt names a specific artist, Gemini will take this as broad creative inspiration and create a track that shares a similar style or mood. We also have filters in place to check outputs against existing content. We recognize that our approach might not be foolproof, so you can report content that may violate your rights or the rights of others.”

Shares of record labels including Universal Music Group and Warner Music dropped 2% on the news. Spotify briefly dipped before rebounding, and Sony shares also saw a slight decline.

Last month, Morgan Stanley published a survey that found up to 60% of Gen Z respondents listen to AI music, for an average of three hours per week. Earlier this year, Bandcamp banned all music wholly or substantially generated using AI.

Addressing the potential for skirting the lines of copyright law (as seen in other recent DeepMind AI tools), Google said:

“If your prompt names a specific artist, Gemini will take this as broad creative inspiration and create a track that shares a similar style or mood. We also have filters in place to check outputs against existing content. We recognize that our approach might not be foolproof, so you can report content that may violate your rights or the rights of others.”

Shares of record labels including Universal Music Group and Warner Music dropped 2% on the news. Spotify briefly dipped before rebounding, and Sony shares also saw a slight decline.

Last month, Morgan Stanley published a survey that found up to 60% of Gen Z respondents listen to AI music, for an average of three hours per week. Earlier this year, Bandcamp banned all music wholly or substantially generated using AI.

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