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Donald Trump Watches SpaceX Launch Its Sixth Test Flight Of Starship Spacecraft
Then President-elect Donald Trump and Elon Musk watch a SpaceX launch in November in Brownsville, Texas (Brandon Bell/Getty Images)

SpaceX competitors Virgin Galactic and Rocket Lab jump on Musk-Trump feud

Who’s winning from Elon Musk and Donald Trump’s lost friendship?

Rani Molla

President Donald Trump and Tesla CEO Elon Musk may have lost their friendship in a very public social media battle yesterday, but there were some winners: Musk’s competitors, including Rocket Lab and Virgin Galactic.

Rocket Lab is up 6% and Virgin Galactic is up 9% premarket.

Yesterday the president threatened to “terminate Elon’s Governmental Subsidies and Contracts,” something that could have huge negative consequences for SpaceX. Musk, for his part, tweeted that he’d decommission SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft and potentially strand NASA astronauts at the space station — a comment he appears to have walked back.

Meanwhile, Musk’s public EV company Tesla lost a record $152 billion in market cap yesterday, though the stock is trading up premarket, perhaps on some signs that the feud may be thawing or that the drama was simply oversold.

The rift doesn’t appear to be having an obvious effect on Tesla’s EV competitors, who would also suffer from Trump legislation cutting EV incentives and regulatory credits.

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Rani Molla & Jon Keegan

Amazon closes at all-time high

Fresh off strong earnings Thursday, Amazon saw its stock price end the week at a record closing high of $244.22.

The stock is up 10% so far this year.

The e-commerce and cloud giant beat analysts’ revenue and earnings, and its massive gain was responsible for more than all of the positive return delivered by the SPDR S&P 500 ETF on Friday.

Jon Keegan
1h
Microsoft, Amazon, and Google all have cumulonimbus-sized cloud backlogs

The top cloud companies can’t keep up with the searing demand for AI computing.

Chart - Cant keep up with cloud demand
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Rani Molla

Google uses an AI-generated ad to sell AI search

Google is using AI video to tell consumers about its AI search tools, with a Veo 3-generated advertisement that will begin airing on TV today. In it, a cartoonish turkey uses Google’s AI Mode to plan a vacation from its farm before it’s eaten for Thanksgiving.

Like other AI ad campaigns that have opted to depict yetis or famous artworks rather than humans, Google chose a turkey as its protagonist to avoid the uncanny valley pitfall that happens when AI is used to generate human likenesses.

Google’s in-house marketing group, Google Creative Lab, developed the idea for the ad — not Google’s AI — but chose not to prominently label the ad as AI, telling The Wall Street Journal that consumers don’t actually care how the ad was made.

Exclusive | Google’s First AI Ad Avoids the Uncanny Valley by Casting a Turkey

Exclusive | Google’s First AI Ad Avoids the Uncanny Valley by Casting a Turkey

Google’s in-house marketing group, Google Creative Lab, developed the idea for the ad — not Google’s AI — but chose not to prominently label the ad as AI, telling The Wall Street Journal that consumers don’t actually care how the ad was made.

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Rani Molla

Amazon, Alphabet, Meta, and Microsoft combined spent nearly $100 billion on capex last quarter

The numbers are in and tech giants Amazon, Alphabet, Meta, and Microsoft spent a whopping $97 billion last quarter on purchases of property and equipment. That’s nearly double what it was a year earlier as AI infrastructure costs continue to balloon and show no sign of stopping. Amazon, which reported earnings and capital expenditure spending that beat analysts’ expectations yesterday, continued to lead the pack, spending more than $35 billion on capex in the quarter that ended in September.

Note that the data we’re using here is from FactSet, which strips out finance leases when calculating capital expenditures. If those expenses were included the total would be well over $100 billion last quarter.

Rani Molla
Slicing the Pie
7h
The best analyst questions from Apple’s earnings call

Apple even answered some of them!

The All-New Apple Ginza opens in Tokyo

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