Track market-moving stories before they get noisy

While much of the conversation in the news cycles about Elon Musk today centers around Space Exploration Technologies Corp (NASDAQ:SPCX), EV giant Tesla Inc. (NASDAQ:TSLA) still remains an integral part of the billionaire’s business strategy. 

While Tesla has increasingly emphasized AI, autonomous driving and humanoid robots like Optimus, investor Ross Gerber, the co-founder of investment firm Gerber Kawasaki and one of the early backers of the company, has publicly voiced his criticism of the pivot.

Speaking to Benzinga, the investor spoke in detail about Tesla’s challenges, pivot away from cars, Musk’s Robotaxi ambitions, a possible SpaceX merger and more. Here’s how the conversation transpired.

Ross Gerber Is Frustrated With Elon Musk’s ClaimsAs Musk, during SpaceX’s earnings call, predicted that the commercial spaceflight company could report $1 trillion in revenue annually as early as 2029, Gerber expressed skepticism about the claim.

"Considering the fact that my car still can’t drive itself, and he’s been saying it’s going to drive itself for 10 years, and I’ve been testing full self-driving for over five years, personally, I’m so frustrated with it," he said, adding that he was not keen on believing Musk’s timelines.

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"We know that he was going to make 20 million cars a year five years ago," the investor said, but Tesla was "stuck at two [million]." Gerber also expressed frustration with Tesla’s Robotaxi ramp. "We’re supposed to have cabs in all major cities right now. We don’t have one cab that works," he said, expressing his frustration as he called the billionaire’s claims "delusional."

SpaceX-Tesla Merger May Be Unfair For SpaceX Investors"I was more bullish on this [SpaceX merger] idea, before it went public than now," Gerber said when asked about a possible merger between the two enterprises. He expanded upon his view by saying that it was a "huge conflict having two public companies" that were “trading at different valuations."

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He said that if a merger were to happen, Tesla’s investors would be getting the "short end of the stick," touting SpaceX as a "much better investment" for people right now when compared to Tesla.

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"Tesla shareholders have been very loyal to Elon despite making no money for a long time. They’re going to want a premium on the price," Gerber said. "So if Tesla right now is trading at $1.3 trillion and SpaceX is trading at almost $2 trillion, it gets complicated," he added.

On the other hand, Gerber said that "if SpaceX bought Tesla at the current price, it would be dilutive to SpaceX. So SpaceX shareholders get screwed," adding that SpaceX was currently trading with a "forward PE" of 80, while "Tesla’s forward PE is like 150."

He then said that estimates for Tesla went down because of disappointing earnings, but SpaceX estimates remained the same. Ultimately, Gerber shared that any question about mergers rests upon whether SpaceX’s board, which is Musk and close associates, was willing to be "completely diluted" in the transaction.

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"What I fear is when the company combines and the market revalues it much lower because it’s not worth $4 trillion," he said, calling the valuation a "joke." Gerber also pointed to possible legal troubles following such deals. "You got two public companies, you get sued, because it’s a total conflict of interest, which he created," the investor said.

"But you know, I think that’s inevitable," he said. "I think in the end, a lot of people get screwed out of all this. And Elon will be the big winner. That’s what I think," Gerber said.

The Public Does Not Like ElonGerber lamented Tesla’s pivot away from vehicles to robotics and AI. Musk does not want to "sell cars to the public because the public doesn’t like him," the Gerber Kawasaki co-founder said. "He’s made his decision."

The investor then said that he would invest in marketing and advertising and "double Tesla sales" if he was "the President of Tesla" and he "took over the car business and the energy storage business."

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"There’s no more Elon, you know," he said, "Now we’re selling cars and maybe I’d reintroduce the Model S; I’d do the $25,000 car. I would make a truck that people would drive, you know, Tesla would do well," Gerber said, outlining his strategy to help Tesla focus back on its EV business.

SpaceX Merger in Parts?Still, Gerber was not opposed to some parts of Tesla merging with SpaceX, like the robots and the computational endeavors. The investor said that such a move would "align the businesses more, where the AI and all the moon shots are in SpaceX and Tesla could sell EVs and battery storage,” he said.

Gerber also opined that leaning into the EV and energy storage business, with soaring oil and gas prices, would be beneficial for the company. "Tesla still builds the best EVs," the investor said. "I think Tesla would double if it wasn’t involved with Elon," he added.

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He also criticized Tesla’s current vision, where it was a "world where we don’t have choice on how we get places," referring to a lack of choice in Tesla’s lineup. "All vehicles look the same," calling it "dystopian."

"All Teslas are three colors," he said, and then proceeded to point to a third-party market for wraps dedicated to Tesla vehicles because "nobody wants the same f**king Tesla," he said.

Construction Makes Full-Self Driving Extremely Difficult"It’s really nice to have Full-Self Driving," Gerber said as the conversation shifted to self-driving, but the investor added that it would be "great" if the system worked perfectly. Gerber predicted that it could one day work well, but that day was "not around the corner."

Speaking about the difficulty of navigating construction zones, an issue that has also presented challenges for autonomous-driving systems such as Alphabet Inc.’s (NASDAQ:GOOGL) (NASDAQ:GOOG) Waymo, he said that driving on those types of roads was "extremely difficult" for the system.

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Gerber pointed out his personal experience of driving with FSD around his neighborhood in the Palisades, where roads were blocked due to construction. "It’s a mayhem," he said.

"It [Tesla FSD] doesn’t know what to do because it does not understand people waving at you," he said. He also said that Waymo avoided the problem by taking a different route, which was longer and "annoying."

Elon Musk Is ‘Stuck’Towards the end of the conversation, the investor said that Musk was "stuck" at this moment in time. "He’s got to get Starship working, he’s got to get Full Self-Driving working, he’s struggling to sell cars," he said.

Gerber also said that if the Iran war were to end soon and oil prices would go down, Tesla’s sales would also experience a downward trend. "He’s got all of these projects simultaneously, he’s digging holes in the desert and nothing’s really working," Gerber said, predicting an "extremely challenging" stage for the billionaire in the coming months.

Instead, Gerber said that investors should focus on what Musk was investing his money in and invest in those things. "Chips, equipment, build out stuff, infrastructure," he said. "Look at it this way, Elon’s a great customer, but I don’t know if you want to be the investor," he added.

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Check out more of Benzinga’s Future Of Mobility coverage by following this link.

Photo courtesy: Rokas Tenys on Shutterstock.com

© 2026 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved.

Alphabet's (GOOGL -0.13%) latest earnings report put two enormous sums front and center: a full-year capital expenditure guidance range that it increased to as much as $205 billion and a Google Cloud backlog that has climbed to $514 billion.

The scales of these figures invite comparison -- which one should investors weigh more heavily? The answer becomes more clear when these numbers are understood as two sides of the same coin.

Alphabet is pouring unprecedented sums into artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure precisely because customer demand -- quantified by its towering backlog -- is accelerating. One number represents its investments, while the other is proof that the investments are paying off.

Image source: Alphabet.

Where is Alphabet's capex going?
Alphabet's AI infrastructure budget will be directed toward servers, GPUs, CPUs, memory, custom chips called Tensor Processing Units (TPUs), data center construction, and the networking gear that stitches everything together. Roughly 60% of the company's recent capital outlays went into servers, while the remaining 40% funded facilities and connectivity.

The importance of Alphabet's rising capex is straightforward. Without additional compute, the company will struggle to convert the capacity agreements it has already inked into revenue. In an environment where AI workloads are expanding faster than traditional cloud usage, underinvesting in AI development would cede ground to rivals -- namely Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure.

Alphabet holds more than $240 billion in cash and marketable securities on its balance sheet, providing it with the financial flexibility to fund its AI build-out even while its free cash flow turns temporarily negative.

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Understanding Google Cloud's backlog
Google Cloud's backlog did not pile up overnight. Rather, the half-trillion-dollar sum reflects a surge in multiyear enterprise commitments for AI-powered solutions. Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai explained that roughly 90% of the Fortune 100 now use the company's Gemini Enterprise model in some form. He went on to explain that customer acquisition is doubling year over year as existing clients exceed their original consumption commitments by more than 50%.

Alphabet expects to recognize a little more than half of its current cloud backlog as revenue over the next 24 months. That schedule provides useful visibility to investors because it explains how a substantial portion of the infrastructure Alphabet is building today is effectively presold.

I expect sales from the company's TPU-based systems will ramp sharply going into 2027, while the remainder of the backlog will flow through ancillary Google Cloud Platform (GCP) services.

Breaking down Alphabet's virtuous cycle
When viewed in isolation, Alphabet's capex plan looks like an overzealous bet on an uncertain future. However, when viewed alongside the company's cloud backlog, it appears more validated, given an already visible future. Essentially, Alphabet's infrastructure budget covers buying servers and building data centers that will enable the company to meet pre-established capacity demand. In turn, Google Cloud generates both revenue and cash flow that justifies continued reinvestment in its AI ecosystem.

Revenue from Google Cloud accelerated 82% year over year in the second quarter, while the segment's operating margin expanded dramatically. This demonstrates that the early returns on prior AI infrastructure spending are materializing.

Ultimately, I think Alphabet's backlog is the more important figure for investors to focus on because it represents external validation that the company's internal spending is necessary. Spending on new programs alone does not create value. But smart capital allocation deployed toward durable, contracted AI-driven demand does.

Alphabet's AI story is not one of reckless spending or intangible growth. Rather, the company possesses a unique virtuous cycle in which AI infrastructure investments are translating into measurable, accelerating cloud adoption. As long as these dynamics hold up, I suspect both numbers will continue rising.

First set of eight satellites for Globalstar 2-R mission deployed to low Earth orbit on a
SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, marking the beginning of the commissioning phase

, /PRNewswire/ -- MDA Space Ltd. (TSX: MDA) (NYSE: MDA), a leading provider of advanced technology and services to the rapidly expanding global space industry, confirms the successful deployment of the initial eight replenishment satellites for Globalstar Inc.'s (NASDAQ:GSAT) existing low Earth orbit (LEO) constellation. Developed and fully integrated and tested in Montréal, the satellites were launched on Saturday, Aug. 15, 2026, at 9:12 p.m. ET aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Space Launch Complex 40 in Cape Canaveral, Florida, and will now undergo a series of in-orbit tests as part of the commissioning phase.

MDA Space satellites developed, fully integrated and tested in Montréal for Globalstar 2-R mission. This marks a defining moment in MDA Space history, as these LEO satellites are the first to be delivered by MDA Space as a prime contractor for commercial communications constellations.

"This program for Globalstar marked a major transformation in our design and high-volume satellite production process, enabling us to accelerate development and manufacturing," said Mike Greenley, CEO of MDA Space. "With the execution of this constellation nearing completion, and with our new high-volume manufacturing facility now in operation, we are ramping up even further, giving us the capacity to meet customer requirements as market demand increases."

The remaining nine satellites on order are in the final stages of integration at MDA Space. Once fully operational on orbit, they will enable Globalstar to extend the life of its existing constellation, which supports direct-to-device satellite-enabled services on select mobile phones and IoT applications.

FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS

This news release may contain forward-looking information within the meaning of applicable securities legislation, which reflects MDA Space's current expectations regarding future events. Such forward-looking information includes, but is not limited to, the commissioning of the satellites following in-orbit testing, completion of the Globalstar constellation program, and integration of the delivered satellites into Globalstar's existing LEO constellation. Forward-looking statements are based on certain assumptions and analyses made by MDA Space in light of management's experience and perception of historical trends, current conditions and expected future developments and other factors it believes are appropriate, and are subject to risks and uncertainties and other factors which may cause the actual results, performance or achievements of MDA Space to differ materially from those anticipated in such forward-looking statements for a variety of reasons, including without limitation the risks and uncertainties detailed under the "Risk Factors" section of MDA Space's annual information form dated March 4, 2026 and MDA Space's Management's Discussion and Analysis for the quarter ended June 30, 2026, each of which is available on SEDAR+ at www.sedarplus.ca and EDGAR at www.sec.gov.

Although MDA Space believes that the assumptions underlying these statements are reasonable, they may prove to be incorrect and there can be no assurance that actual results will be consistent with the forward-looking statements. There are a number of additional risks and uncertainties affecting or that could affect MDA Space, which could cause actual results and developments to differ materially from those described in, expressed or implied by these forward-looking statements. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on any forward-looking statements or information included within this news release. These forward-looking statements speak only as of the date of this news release. Except as required by law, MDA Space is not under any obligation, and expressly disclaims any intention or obligation, to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

ABOUT MDA SPACE

Building the space between proven and possible, MDA Space (TSX:MDA; NYSE:MDA) is a trusted mission partner to the global defence and space industry. A robotics, satellite systems and geointelligence pioneer with a 55-year+ story of world firsts and more than 450 missions, MDA Space is a global leader in communications satellites, Earth and space observation, and space exploration and infrastructure. The global MDA Space team of more than 4,000 space experts has the knowledge and know-how to turn an audacious customer vision into an achievable mission—bringing to bear a one-of-a-kind mix of experience, engineering excellence and wide-eyed wonder that's been in our DNA since day one. For those who dream big and push boundaries on the ground and in the stars to change the world for the better, we'll take you there. For more information, visit mda.space.

SOCIAL MEDIA 

SOURCE MDA Space

PTC Therapeutics NASDAQ: PTCT plans to acquire the ST-920 Fabry disease gene therapy asset through a competitive bankruptcy auction, positioning the company to add a potential one-time treatment to its rare disease portfolio while using its existing global commercial and regulatory infrastructure.

Chief Executive Officer Matthew Klein said the transaction includes a $111 million cash payment at closing, subject to customary conditions, along with up to $100 million in U.S. regulatory milestones. PTC would pay $80 million upon U.S. accelerated approval and $20 million upon U.S. full approval. Klein said the agreement includes no additional international regulatory milestones, sales milestones or royalties.

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“This was an opportunity to advance our strategy of leveraging our accomplished existing rare disease global commercial infrastructure and accelerate short- and intermediate-term revenue growth,” Klein said.

ST-920 Program and Regulatory Path ST-920 is a one-time intravenous adeno-associated virus, or AAV, gene replacement therapy intended to enable production of alpha-galactosidase A, an enzyme deficient in people with Fabry disease. Klein said treatment does not require pre-treatment or concurrent immunosuppression.

The planned biologics license application, or BLA, for accelerated approval is based on results from the Phase I/II STAAR study, which enrolled 33 adult patients with Fabry disease. The key efficacy endpoint for the BLA is the mean positive estimated glomerular filtration rate, or eGFR, slope from baseline through week 52 following treatment.

Klein said the company views the positive eGFR slope as differentiated from other Fabry therapies, which have demonstrated improved renal function but continued negative eGFR slopes from baseline. The study also showed increased alpha-galactosidase A activity maintained for as long as four and a half years in the earliest treated participant, alongside evidence of sustained renal-function improvement, according to the company.

All 18 participants who were receiving enzyme replacement therapy, or ERT, at the start of the study were withdrawn from ERT during the trial, Klein said. The most common adverse events reported were fever, COVID-19 and headache.

ST-920 has received Regenerative Medicine Advanced Therapy, Orphan Drug and Fast Track designations from the FDA. The nonclinical and clinical modules of the rolling BLA submission have already been submitted, while the chemistry, manufacturing and controls package is expected to be submitted in the fourth quarter of 2026. The 104-week STAAR data are planned to provide confirmatory evidence for full approval.

Klein said PTC’s base case assumes accelerated approval based on the existing regulatory plan, though the company will assess longer-term data as the review advances. He added that FDA correspondence reviewed during diligence included confirmation from current agency leadership regarding the plan to use eGFR slope at week 52 for accelerated approval and eGFR slope at week 104 for confirmation.

Commercial Opportunity and Patient Reach PTC estimates there are approximately 11,000 people with Fabry disease in the United States, with similar prevalence rates in other countries where it intends to seek registration. Klein said Fabry patients are concentrated in centers of excellence, and newborn screening programs in several U.S. states and countries may support earlier diagnosis.

Eric Pauwels, PTC’s chief business officer, said the company sees potential for broad use across Fabry patients, including those previously treated with ERT. He noted that ERT is used by roughly two-thirds of patients in key markets including the U.S., Japan, Europe and Brazil, but requires infusions every two weeks and may involve pre-medication and travel to clinics.

“Early diagnosis and early treatment means better outcomes,” Pauwels said, adding that ST-920’s one-time administration and durability data in kidney and heart function could support its value proposition.

Klein said the clinical trial had broad inclusion criteria covering men and women, varied genetic backgrounds and differing treatment histories. However, he noted that patients with AAV6 antibodies would not be eligible under the trial criteria, and the study required participants to have a GFR above 40.

Manufacturing, Infrastructure and Financial Impact PTC said it performed detailed clinical, regulatory, manufacturing and quality diligence before becoming the successful bidder. Klein said Thermo Fisher is the contract development and manufacturing organization for the product and described it as a “best-in-brand” manufacturer. He said process specifications are established, process-performance qualification lots are underway, and supply generated through those lots is expected to support launch readiness.

The company also said it reviewed comparability between products used during different phases of clinical development and the planned commercial product, concluding that the manufacturing transition should not be an issue.

Klein said PTC has existing commercial, market-access and regulatory capacity to support a launch without a significant build-out. The company plans to evaluate registration sequencing beyond the U.S., including in Japan, Europe, Latin America, the Middle East and other markets where it has an established rare disease presence.

Management said the acquisition is not expected to alter its goal of reaching cash flow breakeven in 2026. Klein said the transaction preserves financial flexibility for further business-development activity while giving PTC the opportunity to pursue what it views as a meaningful global Fabry disease treatment opportunity.

About PTC Therapeutics (NASDAQ:PTCT)PTC Therapeutics, Inc is a biopharmaceutical company focused on the discovery, development and commercialization of small molecule and biologic therapies for the treatment of rare genetic disorders. Since its founding in 1998, PTC has dedicated its efforts to addressing high unmet medical needs by targeting underlying genetic causes of disease. The company's research platform emphasizes mechanisms such as nonsense suppression and RNA modulation, enabling the development of novel treatments for conditions with limited therapeutic options.

Among PTC's approved products is Translarna (ataluren), a first-in-class therapy designed to treat nonsense mutation Duchenne muscular dystrophy in select markets.

This instant news alert was generated by narrative science technology and financial data from MarketBeat in order to provide readers with the fastest reporting and unbiased coverage. Please send any questions or comments about this story to [email protected].

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Netflix (NFLX -0.10%) has become one of the more interesting stocks in the market right now. Its shares have fallen sharply from their highs, leaving many investors wondering whether something has gone seriously wrong with the business.

But here's the surprising part: Netflix's business is still growing. In its latest quarter, Netflix generated $12.6 billion of revenue, up 13% year over year . So why has the stock fallen so much?

The answer is more complicated than a "weak" quarter.

Image source: Getty Images.

Netflix became a victim of its own success. For years, Netflix was one of the market's favorite growth stocks.

The company transformed entertainment, expanded globally, and built a streaming platform with hundreds of millions of members. Investors rewarded that success with a premium valuation because they expected Netflix to keep growing rapidly for years.

But Netflix is no longer the same company it was a decade ago. It already operates at an enormous scale -- more than 300 million subscribers. Adding another 100 million members becomes increasingly difficult when the company already serves a massive global audience.

That doesn't mean Netflix has stopped growing. Its Q2 results prove otherwise. The issue is that investors have started asking a different question: How much growth is realistically left?

That question matters because a stock price reflects expectations about the future, not just today's results. A company can grow its profits and still see its stock fall if investors decide those profits are worth a lower price.

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The business is healthy, but the bar is higher. Netflix's latest numbers make it difficult to argue that the underlying business is in trouble.

Revenue increased 13% year over year in Q2, while operating income increased 11%. More importantly, management expects operating income to grow by more than 20% in 2026, with the operating margin reaching 31.5%, up from 29.5% in 2025.

Engagement also remains healthy. Netflix said members watched more than 97 billion hours during the first half of 2026, up 2% from the same period last year, despite competition from major events such as the Winter Olympics and the World Cup.

That is hardly a broken business. But investors now expect Netflix to do more than simply grow.

The company needs to show that it can continue raising prices without hurting engagement, expand margins, and create new revenue streams from its enormous audience.

That brings us to advertising.

Advertising could determine what happens next. Netflix's advertising business has become increasingly important to the investment story.

Management expects advertising revenue to roughly double in 2026 to about $3 billion. That would still represent only a small portion of Netflix's overall revenue, but the opportunity is set to grow much larger over time.

The company is expanding its advertising technology, improving targeting and measurement, and opening more of its inventory to programmatic buyers. If Netflix succeeds, advertising could give the company a powerful new way to monetize its existing audience.

That matters because Netflix no longer needs to rely entirely on adding subscribers. It can raise prices. It can increase advertising revenue. It can improve margins. The more money Netflix earns per member, the less explosive subscriber growth it needs to generate strong earnings growth.

What does it mean for investors? Netflix stock has fallen sharply, trading down about 38% from its 52-week high, but investors should be careful not to confuse a falling stock price with a deteriorating business.

The latest numbers tell a different story. Netflix is still growing. Profitability remains strong. Engagement is healthy. Advertising is gaining momentum.

The real issue is a change in investors' expectations. Investors once paid a premium for Netflix because they believed exceptional growth would continue for years. Today, they are demanding more proof that Netflix can maintain strong growth at its enormous scale.

That makes the next phase particularly important. If Netflix can sustain double-digit revenue growth, expand margins, and turn advertising into a meaningful profit engine, the recent sell-off could eventually look more like a valuation reset than a fundamental breakdown.

But if growth slows materially and advertising fails to meet expectations, the market's caution may prove justified.

All that said, investors should pay attention to execution in the coming quarters.

3 Best Stocks to Buy That You’ve Probably Never Heard OfProgyny NASDAQ: PGNY CEO Pete Anevski said the company expects member engagement and utilization to rebound following a more pronounced summer seasonal slowdown, while early renewal and new-client commitments have increased management’s confidence in its outlook for the remainder of the year.

Speaking at the 46th Annual Canaccord Genuity Growth Conference, Anevski said Progyny has visibility into scheduled appointments for approximately the next six weeks and uses models to forecast utilization beyond that period. He said the company typically experiences seasonality in the second half of July and August, as some members delay fertility treatment because of summer travel, weddings and other personal plans.

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This year’s slowdown has been sharper than in recent years and more comparable to 2022, he said. However, Anevski said September appointment visibility indicates engagement and utilization returning to levels seen during the first half of the year.

“We wouldn’t put out guidance and expectations if we weren’t” comfortable with the outlook, Anevski said, adding that the early September activity is consistent with first-half trends.

Renewal commitments arrive earlier
Anevski said Progyny has received enough renewal commitments to “essentially de-risk” its renewal rates for next year earlier than it normally would in a sales cycle. About one-third of the company’s clients come up for renewal annually, generally under three-year contracts, he said.

Some employer clients renew directly, while others conduct requests for proposals or market checks. Anevski attributed the earlier decisions in part to broader medical-cost pressures facing employers. He said clients have not identified issues with Progyny’s reporting, member experience or performance.

Progyny also is seeing stronger early new-business commitments than it did at the same point last year, both in covered lives and expected contribution from those lives, according to Anevski. The company’s annual sales target is generally at least 1 million lives, and he said management expects to reach that goal based on current activity and the remaining pipeline.

While it is too early to quantify expansion activity at renewing clients, Anevski said Progyny historically sees roughly 20% to 30% of clients add something to their benefits. Potential additions include egg freezing, additional fertility treatment cycles, adoption and surrogacy coverage, global coverage, and ancillary postpartum maternity and menopause offerings.

He added that the company has received no indications that clients plan to reduce benefits.

More competitive replacement opportunities
The mix of early new-business commitments has included a higher proportion of “brownfield” opportunities than greenfield opportunities, Anevski said. He defined brownfield opportunities as employers that already offer fertility coverage through a health plan or another specialized provider.

According to Anevski, employers facing elevated medical-cost inflation are examining programs where they already spend money and seeking ways to improve efficiency. He said Progyny’s average cost per utilizer has risen relatively modestly over time compared with broader medical-cost inflation, which he characterized as running in the high-single-digit to low-double-digit range and expected to remain elevated next year.

Anevski also said the company’s client base has broadened substantially since its early years. Progyny began with five clients across two industries, including four technology clients, and has expanded into more than 45 industries, he said. The company generally sells into at least two-thirds of the industries it serves in a given year, although the specific industries vary.

He said adoption by major employers can encourage other companies within an industry to add the benefit as they compete for talent. Anevski cited the average age of women undergoing in vitro fertilization as 36, with much of Progyny’s utilization occurring among people ages 32 to 40. He said infertility affects one in five people in the U.S.

ROI, health-plan partnerships and cost management
Anevski distinguished Progyny’s offerings from traditional wellness programs, arguing that the company provides employers with hard-dollar savings calculations and detailed quarterly reporting. He said transparency around program costs, member outcomes and savings has supported Progyny’s 99% retention rate for 10 consecutive years.

He said health plans historically have not focused heavily on fertility-benefit management because their administrative-services business model does not necessarily produce more revenue from offering the coverage. In contrast, Progyny operates a proprietary provider network, offers care advocates and tracks outcomes, Anevski said.

The company has partnered with health plans, including Cigna, which began an expanded partnership effective in September of the prior year. Anevski said the current cycle is the first full sales season for that relationship and that Progyny is holding discussions with additional health plans regarding similar partnerships.

On medical-cost trends, Anevski said Progyny’s scale and network relationships have helped it contain provider rates, which he described as flat to down over time depending on the clinic. He also said the company’s improving outcomes contribute to savings for clients.

Expanded products and small-employer market
Progyny has approximately 7 million covered lives, with roughly 2.7 million having access to one or more expanded products, Anevski said. Those offerings include postpartum maternity and menopause programs, as well as Progyny Select.

Progyny Select is designed for employers with as few as 100 employees that typically purchase benefits on a fully insured, premium-based model. The product provides more predictable costs for smaller employers while placing them in a broader risk pool, Anevski said.

He said the company is working with channel partners, general agents and professional employer organizations to expand distribution of Progyny Select through broker networks. The offering increased Progyny’s estimated total addressable market by 50 million lives, to 155 million lives from 105 million previously, according to Anevski.

About Progyny (NASDAQ:PGNY)Progyny, Inc is a New York-based fertility benefits management company that partners with employers and health plans to design and administer comprehensive family-building programs. The company's digital health platform integrates clinical expertise, patient support tools and data analytics to help members navigate fertility treatments, from in vitro fertilization (IVF) and egg freezing to surrogacy and adoption. By focusing on outcomes-based care, Progyny aims to improve success rates while controlling costs for its clients.

The core of Progyny's offering is its proprietary Smart Cycle® benefit, which bundles clinical, emotional and logistical support into a single package.

This instant news alert was generated by narrative science technology and financial data from MarketBeat in order to provide readers with the fastest reporting and unbiased coverage. Please send any questions or comments about this story to [email protected].

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Meta said it would remove harassing videos filmed with its AI glasses, but its content moderation so far has been uneven, with dozens of videos remaining on its Instagram platform.

Meta; Getty Images; Alyssa Powell/BI

"Are you a secret code?" a young man in Meta glasses asks a woman in a tank top on the sidewalk. "What do you mean, 'a secret code?'" she responds, seemingly confused as the man's glasses record her. "Because I'm trying to crack you," he says.

The interaction, filmed by content creator Colin Allen for his Instagram account @thatiscolin, is one of dozens of similar videos that I found from popular and verified accounts on the platform in the month after Instagram boss Adam Mosseri said Meta would remove "harassing" pickup line videos filmed with Meta glasses.

After I sent Meta a link to 20-plus pickup and other harassing "prank" videos from different accounts, the company removed the "secret code" video and eight others. Allen, who describes himself as a "lifestyle and comedy creator" and not a pickup artist, had used the same line to different women in several other videos, which remain up. He didn't respond to my attempts to contact him.

An Instagram account that does some pickup line content, including asking women on the sidewalk, "Are you a secret code? Because I'm trying to crack you." 

Instagram / @thatiscolin

Videos from pickup artists using Meta glasses to approach women in public have emerged as a genre on Instagram's Reels and TikTok, with some of the popular videos racking up millions of views. These videos of men trying pickup lines on women on the street, along with pranks on cashiers or service workers, are tagged on Instagram as being shot on "Meta glasses."

Being associated with that kind of icky content can't be good for the reputation of the devices, which some people are already referring to as "creep glasses."

Tracy Clayton, a spokesperson for Meta, told me that thousands of pieces of content have already been removed, and several large accounts have been taken down. The recent enforcement action falls under Meta's existing Community Standards on bullying and harassment, which broadly forbid content that sexualizes other adults or sexually harasses people. Additionally, search terms for "rizz" or "cold approach," common pickup slang, are now blocked in search.

Meta's Instagram blocks the search terms for pickup artist content like "rizz" and "cold approach" (meaning to approach a stranger). 

Instagram / screenshot

My last month spent in pickup-line video land has shown me that Meta's enforcement has been uneven in the weeks since Mosseri's remarks. "We don't want people to be surreptitiously taking videos of other people and harassing them and then posting them on our platform. So we're trying to fight that every way we can," Mosseri said in mid-July.

When initially reporting on Mosseri's comments, I found two large pickup artist accounts that had been deactivated as part of the recent enforcement wave. A few days after my article was published last month, one of those accounts was reactivated (a Meta spokesperson said this was by error, and the account was re-banned after I brought it to their attention).

Carolina Are, a digital criminologist based at the London School of Economics and Political Science, said that Meta and Mosseri's response to the harassing AI glasses videos highlights isn't enough.

"There is a backlash, and then Meta tends to minimize its own responsibility for it. They talk about how this is user-generated behavior or an error in enforcement," Are said. "But they don't recognize the systemic issues that are causing that to happen, and they take no accountability for what their policies or infrastructure have done to enable that behavior," Are said.

These pickup and prank videos made with Meta glasses aren't exclusive to Instagram; they also exist on YouTube and TikTok.

A spokesperson for TikTok told me that it has policies against harassing content. After I sent a list of four videos of pickup artists who also posted on Instagram, TikTok took down two of them, citing its policy on bullying and sexual harassment.

Boot Bullwinkle, a representative for YouTube, told me it has policies against certain kinds of harassment and dangerous prank videos. YouTube has been dealing with moderation issues around street pranks and pickup artists for years. After I sent four examples of channels that posted Meta glasses pickup content, YouTube said it took down "several" of the videos and removed one of the channels from its monetization program.

A headache of its own making

A pair of Meta's Ray-Ban AI glasses. Mark Zuckerberg said sales of Meta's AI glasses tripled last year and he believes they are "some of the fastest growing consumer electronics in history." 

Bloomberg/Getty Images

Mosseri personally delivering the message that Instagram will take down this specific kind of content is unique among video platforms. That may be because of Instagram's unique relationship with the Meta glasses: Not only are these unsavory videos a headache of its own making, but they also risk harming the public perception of a product that Meta invested big bucks in building and marketing.

Plenty of people are buying up Meta's AI glasses. Sales have grown since their launch in 2021, topping 7 million units in 2025, more than triple the previous year. Meta is the early leader in the smart glasses race.

They've been a bright spot for Meta's money-losing Reality Labs department, which faced layoffs this year. They're also key to CEO Mark Zuckerberg's AI bet.

"I think in the future, if you don't have glasses that have AI or some way to interact with AI, I think you're kind of similarly, probably [going to] be at a pretty significant cognitive disadvantage compared to other people and who you're working with, or competing against," Zuckerberg said in a 2025 earnings call.

The recent backlash — remember when Kylie Jenner's Instagram comments were flooded with people calling her signature Meta glasses "pervert glasses"? — presents a thorn in Meta's side.

"In many cases, the public-facing rules that users see are vague enough to be open to the discretion of the platform to make those kinds of shifts and changes at any time," said Sarah T. Roberts, faculty director and cofounder of the UCLA Center for Critical Internet Inquiry.

Meta is betting AI could supercharge its moderation efforts. Zuckerberg and other execs have long said the old way of doing things, leaning heavily on third-party human contractors, doesn't scale. The theory goes that AI can be trained to autonomously flag violating content. In June, Meta told the Financial Times that initial tests showed that its AI systems made fewer mistakes than human moderators and flagged more violating content. The jury's still out on whether that will prove to be the case long term.

Deactivated one day, reactivated the nextAfter seeking out and interacting with some of these pickup line videos in Reels, I started getting served more and more of them. I no longer needed search terms to find them; my Reels feed was filled nearly entirely with that genre of content.

One creator whose account was active weeks after Mosseri's remarks is Caren Babaknia. He has 174,000 followers and posts videos of himself driving up to women he identifies in the caption as escorts and talking to them while wearing Meta glasses.

An account that posted multiple videos of paying women that appear to be sex workers to watch a video of memes and gambling ads on his laptop. 

Instagram / @carenview

In one video captioned "Wasting ESCORTS time by making them watch brainrot" he offers a woman who approached his car $50 in exchange for watching a video on his laptop of brainrot memes. The woman agrees, and he plays the video, which includes an ad for a gambling app. He hands her the cash.

I spoke with Babaknia on the phone to get his perspective on videos made with Meta glasses. He told me he believes the women in his videos are aware that he was filming them because his content is so viral that they knew him.

He voiced disdain for pickup artists with Meta glasses, however.

"I think the rizz content is very cringe," he told me. "I think those are normal girls and they don't deserve to be videoed without their consent."

After including one of Babaknia's videos in the list I recently sent to Meta, his account was deactivated the following morning. Babaknia told me that he was going to appeal. A day later, his account was back up with the videos restored.

It's not unusual for changes to enforcement in content moderation to take time to implement at scale. But as Meta glasses get increasingly popular, it seems likely that Instagram will face pressure to deal with this — and potentially new forms of bad behavior — more and more.

"It's not like they just started those platforms yesterday," said Roberts from UCLA. "It's not like they don't have 20 years now of understanding how people will behave at the most depraved levels if given a chance."

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Katie Notopoulos

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Katie Notopoulos is a senior correspondent at Business Insider who writes about technology, business, and culture. She covers topics such as internet culture, Big Tech, retail, AI, parenting in the digital age, and personal tech.Previously, Katie was a tech reporter at BuzzFeed News and has written for The Atlantic, The New York Times, Fast Company, and MIT Technology Review. Based in New York, you can reach her by email [email protected] or find her on Twitter. Bluesky, and Threads @katienotopoulos.Some of her stories include:

Google AI said to put glue in pizza — so I made a pizza with glue and ate itThe Zuckermoon is overGen Z doesn't want to say "hello" when answering the phone. I'm concerned. Wait, is Walmart cool now?Mark Zuckerberg has created the saddest place on the internet with Meta AI's public feedHow Instagram got its mojo backAm I the JD Vance of my group chat?We need to talk about whatever's happening with Starbucks' drinksThis chart shows a key reason why millennial parents are miserableIt's not just you. Eggshells really are chipping more.

Meta

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A while back, Morgan Stanley's well-respected automotive analyst Adam Jonas evaluated Tesla (TSLA +0.68%) using a sum-of-the-parts model between artificial intelligence (AI), software, energy, and robotics rather than considering it a traditional automaker. What's interesting is that Jonas believes autonomous driving technology and the robotaxi business drive 41% of Tesla's valuation compared to 34% from its core automotive and energy business and about 25% from Optimus robot potential. So, when robotaxi rival Waymo of Alphabet (GOOG -0.12%)(GOOGL -0.13%) points out why Tesla's driverless technology strategy could have serious drawbacks, investors should take note.

What's going on? Recently, Alphabet's Waymo co-chief executive officer, Dmitri Dolgov, seemingly took a shot at Tesla when speaking at Y Combinator's Startup School, though he didn't name the automnaker specifically. Dolgov essentially argued that camera-only self-driving technology could be considered "weak sensing" and that the strategy would develop quickly initially before hitting a lower ceiling of capability and performance long term.

Image source: Y Combinator / Waymo co-CEO Dmitri Dolgov at Startup School 2026.

For years, the common argument for a camera-only system was that it's cheaper and that humans rely solely on vision when driving. Therefore, a camera-only system could work adequately for driverless vehicles. Dolgov essentially agreed that a camera-only system could match human performance, but that to build a driverless technology that's safer than humans, which is the entire goal, there needs to be more sensors.

Although Tesla has opted for a camera-only driverless system strategy, which enables the automaker to lower costs, Waymo opts to use three sensor types: cameras, LiDAR, and radar. "These different sensing modalities, they're not backups to each other," Dolgov said during the presentation. The data fuses into a single view of the world that he noted is "vastly superior to what you get with any one sensor."

It's true that using three sensors is better than one unless you believe all three are redundant. In my opinion, they aren't. Consider this simple scenario: A snow storm could cause a whiteout for camera-only systems, which would see next to nothing, while LiDAR in the same scenario would have no problem detecting a human or obstacle on the roadside. Even a fluke event such as mud covering the camera lens could completely shut down the driverless vehicle, whereas a Waymo vehicle with LiDAR and radar could safely navigate back to its home base to clean the camera.

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Falling behind? For Tesla investors, the criticism about camera-only systems should be concerning because there is truth to it. It's a potential speed bump for Tesla especially when you consider there are other issues with Tesla's driverless technology and robotaxi strategy, such as Tesla being on the hook to replace the self-driving computer in roughly 4 million vehicles, or figure out a way to compensate owners fairly after admitting Hardware 3 isn't powerful enough to deliver the unsupervised self-driving as advertised.

Image source: Tesla.

Another issue for Tesla investors to chew on is that the automaker has yet to deliver much transparency or a timeline for its Cybercab approval process. The vehicle needs approvals to begin charging for rides. Amazon-owned Zoox recently received approval by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) to commercially deploy its purpose-built, steering-wheel-free robotaxis, enabling it to officially charge for rides, which it plans to do shortly in Las Vegas.

What it all means Simply put, investors need to be aware of not only Tesla's camera-only capability for its driverless system but the steps it needs to take for the approval process so that its robotaxi business can truly start expanding. Waymo, among other rivals, has already established a lead in the business compared to Tesla. Considering the latter's valuation is largely believed to be from its robotaxi potential, Tesla needs to play catch up fast.

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Artificial intelligence workloads are pulling forward a decade of electricity demand growth, and nuclear power is emerging as the always-on backbone hyperscalers actually want to buy. The Department of Energy projects data centers will account for up to 12% of U.S. electrical demand by 2028, and Constellation’s own CEO has told investors that "projected spending levels for 2026 are nearly 75% higher than last year and continue to be revised upward" from hyperscaler customers. That is the setup heading into August.

Here are three US-listed operators with the reactor fleets, gas backup, and signed hyperscaler contracts to monetize that surge. Each pick is thesis-driven, not a trade instruction. Read them as research candidates for anyone building a nuclear-plus-AI power basket.

Constellation Energy (CEG): The Purest Nuclear-AI Play
Constellation Energy (NASDAQ:CEG | CEG Price Prediction) runs the largest US nuclear fleet and is the clearest listed vehicle for pricing hyperscaler power appetite. Shares closed at $282.50 on August 14, giving the stock a market cap of roughly $98.7 billion and a forward P/E near 23. The stock has climbed 9.45% over the past month, even as it sits -19.8% year to date after a huge 2025 run.

The bull case tightened on the Q2 report. Constellation posted adjusted EPS of $2.55 versus a $2.33 estimate and raised FY2026 adjusted EPS guidance to $11.50 to $12.50. The nuclear fleet delivered 44,160 GWh at a 93% capacity factor in Q2. More important for the AI thesis: management signed 920 MW of long-term nuclear PPAs (15 to 20 years) with investment-grade customers beginning 2029 to 2032, and the Crane Clean Energy Center restart is targeting 2027. Wall Street is aligned, with 20 buy or strong buy ratings against 3 holds and an average target of $349.96.

Risk to watch: The Q2 refueling schedule ran 86 outage days versus 41 the prior year, dropping operating income -39% YoY. Illinois’ ZEC program also ends May 2027, and PJM’s capacity market framework is still being finalized.

Vistra (VST): The NVIDIA-Backed Diversified Operator
Vistra (NYSE:VST) closed at $148.13 on August 14, up 5.36% over the past week after the Q2 report and Helix announcement. Forward P/E sits at just 16, and analyst sentiment is unusually one-sided with 19 buy or strong buy ratings and zero holds. The average price target is $221.74.

The headline catalyst is the Helix Digital Infrastructure JV with NVIDIA, KKR, and Kuwait Investment Authority, which designates Vistra as preferred power provider with an initial commitment of up to $1.0 billion. CEO Jim Burke framed the structure as a "rack-to-grid, one-stop-shop solution" for data center customers. Add Meta PPAs signed at the Comanche Peak twin-unit nuclear plant, FERC approval for the pending 5,500 MW Cogentrix gas acquisition, and Q2 Ongoing Ops Adjusted EBITDA of $1.77 billion (+30%+ YoY), and you get a nuclear-plus-gas fleet that hit 97%+ commercial availability during extreme heat. The company is hedged ~100% for 2026 and ~94% for 2027, locking in economics while the AI load ramp arrives.

Risk to watch: Q2 GAAP net income fell -6.73% YoY, hit by $472 million in unrealized MTM hedge losses. That volatility can distort headline earnings even when cash economics improve, and ERCOT forward curves are running meaningfully lower for 2027.

NextEra Energy (NEE): The Diversified Compounder With a Nuclear Restart
NextEra Energy (NYSE:NEE) is the largest name in the group at $179.4 billion market cap, and the only one delivering a real dividend yield alongside the AI story. Shares closed at $86.19 on August 14, up 8.86% year to date and 22.75% over the past year. The dividend yield is 2.77% with committed growth of ~10% annually through 2026, then 6% through 2028.

Q2 delivered adjusted EPS of $1.15 versus $1.10 estimate, the fifth straight beat. The AI pipeline is enormous: FPL has ~21 GW of large-load interest, with 12 GW in advanced discussions. CEO John Ketchum told investors that "every gigawatt of large load under FPL’s approved tariff [is] equivalent to roughly $2 billion of capex". The Duane Arnold nuclear restart is on track for no later than Q1 2029, and the proposed Dominion Energy merger is targeted to close in H2 2027. Management is guiding to 8%+ adjusted EPS CAGR through 2032, then 9%+ through 2035 assuming the Dominion combination closes.

Risk to watch: The Dominion merger has to clear Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, FERC, and NRC. Q2 revenue of $7.53 billion missed the $8.15 billion consensus, a reminder that top-line lumpiness happens even when adjusted EPS beats.

The Setup Into September
Each name plays the same theme differently. Constellation is the pure-fleet nuclear operator with hyperscaler PPAs already inked. Vistra pairs baseload nuclear with the fastest-growing gas platform and now has NVIDIA on its cap table via Helix. NextEra brings the biggest customer pipeline, a regulated Florida engine, and an active nuclear restart. Watch PJM’s capacity framework, the ERCOT queue thinning under Governor Abbott, and NextEra’s promised year-end large-load contract announcement. Those three catalysts will tell you whether the August rally in the group has more room to run.

Contact [email protected] for any questions or corrections.

Memory is a critical part of the artificial intelligence (AI) hardware stack in data centers, computers, smartphones, and even cars. It keeps data constantly flowing to processing chips during AI model training and inference workloads, preventing bottlenecks. Without sufficient memory capacity, users of AI chatbots, AI agents, and even self-driving cars would have a very laggy experience.

In April, Roundhill Investments launched an exchange-traded fund (ETF) that exclusively invests in memory stocks called the Roundhill Memory ETF (DRAM +0.69%). It has already delivered an 80% return in just four months.

The ETF has more than one-quarter of its assets allocated to America's top memory company, Micron Technology (MU +2.30%), which has been a key driver of its returns. Should investors add this fund to their portfolio now, or have they missed the boat?

Image source: Getty Images.

Every leading memory stock is packed into one ETF Data center operators are currently buying high bandwidth memory (HBM) hand over fist to power their AI workloads. It's causing a global shortage across all memory types because suppliers are reducing manufacturing capacity in some segments to prioritize HBM.

This is creating a bonanza for companies like Micron and its main competitors, Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix, because the shortage allows them to dictate prices. As a result, all three are experiencing blistering increases in revenue and earnings. Shareholders are reaping the rewards, with Micron stock soaring by over 600% over the last 12 months alone.

MU data by YCharts

The Roundhill Memory ETF holds 24 stocks, but Micron, Samsung, and SK Hynix, its top three holdings, account for a whopping 70.9% of the portfolio's value.

Stock

Roundhill ETF Portfolio Weighting

Micron Technology

26.02%

Samsung Electronics

24.57%

SK Hynix

20.37%

Data source: Roundhill Investments. Portfolio weightings are accurate as of Aug. 10, 2026, and are subject to change.

Micron, Samsung, and SK Hynix are racing to produce as many of their new HBM4 data center chips as possible, which offer record capacity specifically for AI workloads. Micron's HBM4 delivers 60% higher performance than its previous HBM3 solution and is 20% more energy-efficient. This is an ideal combination for data center operators seeking the fastest processing speeds at the lowest cost.

The memory shortage is so severe right now that Nvidia is sourcing HBM4 from all three suppliers for its new Vera Rubin systems, which include its Rubin graphics processing units (GPUs), Vera central processing units (CPUs), and specialized networking equipment. These systems are now the gold standard for running AI workloads.

Outside of its top three positions, the Roundhill ETF also holds prominent memory and storage names like Seagate Technology Holdings, Western Digital, and Sandisk.

The Roundhill ETF is obliterating the market, but can it continue? The Roundhill Memory ETF only launched on April 2, so it doesn't have much of a track record for investors to consider. But as mentioned, it has already rocketed up by 80%, obliterating the broader market so far.

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However, the soaring cost of AI chips and infrastructure is making AI models and software increasingly expensive to deploy. Large companies like Uber Technologies, Walmart, AT&T, and even Amazon have reportedly placed AI usage restrictions on their employees to prevent cost blowouts.

In Uber's case, the decision came after it blew through its entire 2026 AI budget in four months, triggered by a passive price increase imposed by Anthropic for using its Claude Code programming assistant.

A recent survey by UBS Group found that 60% of businesses are routing tasks to more efficient AI models that use less computing power to keep their spending under control. That isn't great news for the semiconductor industry, as it could eventually lead to declining demand for GPUs, CPUs, and memory.

But none of this should be surprising, because the chip industry has always been cyclical. Data center operators used to invest in new infrastructure every few years, but that upgrade cycle has shortened as updated chips and components now hit the market annually. Any data center operator that doesn't buy the latest chips risks losing the race for AI supremacy.

However, the current spending rate won't be sustainable forever, so I would be very cautious about buying the Roundhill Memory ETF right now. If I did add it to my diversified portfolio, I would ensure it has a very small weighting, under 5%, to keep potential risks in check.

As the crypto winter marches on, Bitcoin has now plummeted nearly 28% this year. This has been particularly difficult for companies like Bitcoin miners that are valued based on their Bitcoin holdings.

Luckily, however, Bitcoin mining is made possible through powerful data centers that use high-speed computers to solve cryptographic puzzles to earn and mine new Bitcoins. Data centers are also fueling the artificial intelligence (AI) revolution.

As crypto continues to struggle, some Bitcoin mining companies have retrofitted their facilities to power AI. Riot Platforms (RIOT -1.01%) just entered into a $9 billion agreement to provide AI compute to Anthropic. Here's why AI is key to valuing crypto-mining companies.

Image source: Getty Images.

Making the conversion comes with rewards
Crypto mining facilities have several key advantages when it comes to becoming an AI data center. For one, they already have a significant head start: They have secured land for a data center, are connected to the power grid, and are up and running. New data centers have received significant pushback from the public due to environmental issues and the threat AI could pose to humanity.

Still, making the transition is not necessarily easy. The hardware used by Bitcoin miners does not work for AI, so these miners need to secure graphics processing units (GPUs) from companies like Nvidia, as well as different fans to keep the chips cool.

Given that the software and infrastructure needs differ, this may also require new personnel to operate effectively. Power consumption and its management also differ for AI, and Bitcoin mining companies may need new permits to operate an AI data center.

But for those that successfully make the transition, the rewards can be immense.

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Riot's $9.1 billion deal with Anthropic is for an initial 20-year term at its Rockdale, Texas, campus. There are also two five-year extensions at Anthropic's option, which could translate into an additional $7 billion of revenue.

This follows an earlier deal this year in which Riot agreed to lease 25 megawatts (MW) of compute capacity to Advanced Micro Devices, with the potential to expand to 200 MW of critical IT load capacity. Riot's deal with Anthropic is for 191 MW of capacity.

The company generated only about $23 million in revenue from its data center division in the second quarter, but you can see how that's going to ramp up quickly: $9 billion over 20 years, split evenly, is about $450 million per year. Riot had roughly $174 million of total revenue in the second quarter.

Valuing these stocks based on potential compute
A major way many investors are valuing neocloud stocks serving AI companies like Anthropic and OpenAI is by looking at total capacity and determining how much they can charge for it, which can help them model total revenue.

Much more goes into that because companies also have to bring all their capacity online to monetize it, which presents its own challenges. And the data center business is capital-intensive, so investors need to assess the potential returns on investment.

The amount data centers can charge for compute may change over time, based on supply and demand. While I don't know the full details of the Riot-Anthropic deal, I suspect Anthropic is not contractually obligated to pay for all 20 years and has the flexibility to exit the deal.

For instance, Anthropic signed a huge compute deal with Space Exploration Technologies, under which it could pull out with 90 days' notice.

Still, looking at Riot, the company could have upside, given its 1.7 gigawatts of fully approved compute capacity. The company trades at a $7.1 billion market cap.

Another Neocloud, Nebius, has a roughly $75.5 billion market cap and plans to have 800 MW to 1 GW of power online by the end of the year. However, Nebius also plans to have 5 GW of contracted power by year's end and then plans to bring 1 GW of power online per year starting in 2027.

So there's a reason for Riot's discount, but you can see how contracted power and actual capacity brought online are everything for neocloud stocks, and thus the Bitcoin miners are trying to become neoclouds.

Alnylam Pharmaceuticals (ALNY +0.67%) looks like an investor's nightmare at first glance. The drugmaker's shares have lost more than half their value over the past 12 months. The biotech stock is down more than 20% over the past four weeks.

Some Alnylam shareholders could be sorely tempted to throw in the towel. However, I think there's a strong case that the sell-off is way overdone. And I believe that many investors are missing a bigger story with Alnylam.

Image source: Getty Images.

Why Alnylam's stock has been a dumpster fire
Alnylam gave what appears, in retrospect, to be an early warning of a significant problem in its 2025 fourth-quarter results, announced in February 2026. Sales for the company's transthyretin-mediated (ATTR) amyloidosis therapy, Amvuttra, were lower than Wall Street expected.

But the full extent of the issue became apparent when Alnylam released its 2026 second-quarter results on July 30. Amvuttra's sales were again below expectations. The big story, though, was that Alnylam lowered its full-year sales guidance for its TTR products (which include Amvuttra and Onpattro) by $200 million.

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Alnylam CEO Yvonne Greenstreet said that the reduced guidance reflected "a better understanding with hindsight" of Amvuttra's launch in the transthyretin amyloid cardiomyopathy (ATTR-CM) market. She noted that the initial exceptionally strong sales growth in the ATTR-CM indication last year "benefited significantly from pent-up demand for a new therapy that has since normalized."

Meanwhile, rival BridgeBio's (BBIO -1.66%) ATTR-CM drug, Attruby, is gaining momentum. Attruby's sales more than tripled year over year in Q2 to $222.4 million -- better than analysts expected. This growth makes Alnylam's disappointment with Amvuttra sting even more.

To make matters worse, a cloud hovers over Alnylam's next-generation ATTR therapy, nucresiran, which is currently in late-stage clinical testing. AstraZeneca (AZN -0.50%) and Ionis Pharmaceuticals (IONS +2.45%) reported in July that their experimental ATTR-CM drug, eplontersen, failed to meet the primary endpoint in a Phase 3 study. This clinical setback raised questions about whether the chances of success for nucresiran are lower than anticipated.

The rest of the story
You might think that Amvuttra's sales are struggling based on the market's reaction to Alnylam's Q2 update. However, that isn't the case at all. Sales for the drug more than doubled year over year in Q2 to $1.01 billion. This marked the first quarter in which Amvuttra raked in more than $1 billion.

Sure, management overestimated how strong Amvuttra's growth trajectory would be. But Alnylam should now be able to more accurately forecast sales for the blockbuster drug -- and growth should remain robust. Importantly, Amvuttra remains the only therapy approved for the full spectrum of TTR amyloidosis.

I'm not worried about comparisons with BridgeBio's Attruby, either. It makes sense that Attruby's growth would be stronger at this point. The drug won its first U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval in November 2024. Alnylam secured the first FDA approval for Amvuttra in more than two years earlier and added an ATTR-CM approval in March 2025.

As for the concerns about AstraZeneca's and Ionis' setback for eplontersen, I agree with Stifel (SF -0.07%) analyst Paul Matteis' take that it's "a huge positive" for Amvuttra. I don't think that Eplontersen's failure makes it more likely that nucresiran will flop, either. The two drugs use different mechanisms for silencing genes. If anything, Alnylam should be able to learn from any mistakes made with eplontersen's clinical trial design.

Last but not least, Pfizer's (PFE -0.04%) Vyndaqel/Vyndamax (tafamidis) will no longer face a generic rival in the U.S. until mid-2031. This gives Alnylam and Amvuttra more runway for growth. Between this delay and eplontersen's late-stage disappointment, the competitive landscape has shifted dramatically in Alnylam's favor.

Alnylam's future still looks bright.
I noticed one word repeated throughout Alnylam's Q2 update: confidence. The company is confident about Amvuttra's growth. It's confidence about continued leadership in ATTR. It's confident about nucresiran. Greenstreet said that she's "more confident about our future outlook" than before. Management's confidence extends to its goal of generating at least 25% compound annual growth in total revenue through 2030.

Sure, Alnylam faces risks. All stocks do. But many investors appear to be missing the fact that Alnylam's future still looks bright.

Many are also overlooking Alnylam's valuation. No, it isn't a stock that would appeal to most value investors. However, Alnylam's price-to-earnings-to-growth (PEG) ratio, which is based on analysts' five-year earnings growth projections, is a super-low 0.41.

The recent sell-off is overdone, in my view. That creates a great buying opportunity for forward-looking investors.

Amid the "SaaS Apocalypse," These 3 Names Are Boosting BuybacksPegasystems NASDAQ: PEGA CFO Ken Stillwell outlined the company’s position as a workflow platform for large enterprises, its expanding AI product capabilities and its plans to improve sales execution following a softer first half for annual contract value growth.

Speaking at a Canaccord fireside chat, Stillwell said Pega serves organizations that need to manage structured, often regulated workflows that cannot readily be addressed with commercial off-the-shelf software. These use cases can include functions such as dispute management, loan origination and other processes requiring specific controls, integrations and customer-facing touch points.

Get Pegasystems alerts:

3 AI and Cloud Stocks With Analyst Conviction and Long RunwaysRather than relying on custom-built applications, which can create technical debt and complicate change management, customers can use Pega’s platform to configure applications and workflow structures, Stillwell said. He characterized the company’s competitive set as including platform providers such as Salesforce, Microsoft and Adobe in certain use cases, along with internally developed software.

Blueprint and Infinity Studio Aim to Speed Development
Stillwell said Pega Blueprint was designed to reduce the lengthy front-end process involved in helping customers identify and visualize applications they want to modernize. Blueprint allows users to identify their industry and problem, define user personas and fields, and map potential integrations to produce a visual representation of a proposed workflow application.

Time to Take Notice: PEGA’s GenAI Blueprint Delivers Huge Q3 BeatHe said customers previously needed extensive meetings, demonstrations, screen mockups and whiteboarding before reaching a prototype stage. In some cases over the past 12 months, customers using Blueprint have created a use-case template and configured an application for deployment in fewer than 90 days, according to Stillwell.

However, he said Blueprint initially did not provide a simple path from the design environment to a production build environment. Pega recently made generally available Pega Infinity 2026, including Pega Infinity Studio, which enables customers to import a Blueprint design into a development environment and use AI to help complete the application.

Infinity Studio had been generally available for about two weeks at the time of the discussion. Stillwell said Pega had previously given a beta version to roughly 20 customers for about three months, using their feedback to refine the product and identify areas for future updates.

Customers are also interested in connecting AI models to Blueprint, Stillwell said. The company supports connections to different models through MCP connections and offers native models within Blueprint. He said building workflows through prompts and discussion represents a newer experience for many Pega customers, which historically used more drag-and-drop development methods.

Fixed AI Pricing and Model Selection
Pega has adopted a model in which it charges customers a fixed AI-enabled price for a unit of work rather than charging per token, Stillwell said. The approach is intended to provide customers with certainty around their costs while putting the responsibility for managing token consumption on Pega.

Stillwell said the company’s architecture helps manage that risk by determining where AI is needed and selecting an appropriate model for each task. Not every activity requires a frontier model, he said, citing automated customer-service call wrap-up as an example of work that could use a less resource-intensive model.

“Our job is to help our clients to only use AI when it is needed to be used, and then when it is used, to use the right model,” Stillwell said.

He compared the company’s approach to cloud pricing, where usage can vary but Pega can estimate costs when it understands a customer’s use cases and operating parameters. Tools involving throttling, governance and model selection also help the company manage potential cost variability, he said.

First-Half ACV Growth Fell Short of Expectations
Stillwell acknowledged that first-half 2026 ACV growth was “unimpressive” and disappointing. He attributed the performance to a combination of factors, including management complacency after a strong start to 2025, insufficient pipeline-building activity late last year and a slower-than-needed shift in the sales organization from a “farmer” mentality to a more proactive “hunter” approach.

He also said enterprise buyers were distracted by AI during the first half, as vendors broadly promoted AI offerings. Pega saw in March and April that its sales activity measures were not progressing sufficiently, he said.

Stillwell said the company’s pipeline entering the second half was significantly higher than it was a year earlier and exceeded the level needed to meet its back-half growth target. He also said many financial-services customers that had been focused on AI governance and compliance earlier in the year had since established AI gateways, control processes, model choices and, in some cases, token-spending budgets.

Pega’s sales activity measures have improved “dramatically” over the prior six weeks, Stillwell said.
The company is monitoring outbound sales activity closely alongside its forecasting process.
Stillwell said Pega has a strong working set of opportunities for the second half.

Cash Flow Outlook and AI Governance Opportunity
Stillwell said Pega’s billing and collections are typically concentrated in the first and fourth quarters. Given lower bookings in the second quarter and the company’s normal seasonal pattern, he said the third quarter could produce slightly negative cash flow, while the fourth quarter is expected to be strong.

If Pega does not recapture its first-half ACV growth shortfall, the company could face pressure on its cash-flow target for the year, he said. He characterized full-year cash flow as likely to be relatively flat year over year. Stillwell nevertheless reaffirmed the framework behind Pega’s target of more than $700 million in free cash flow in 2028, which depends on double-digit ACV growth in 2027 and 2028 as well as operating leverage.

On AI agents, Stillwell said Pega’s workflow technology can provide structure and governance around how agents execute tasks, particularly in regulated activities where processes must be completed in a prescribed sequence. He said AI can be useful for testing, data analysis, extraction, analytics and tactical coding work, but companies remain cautious about allowing agents to generate code or take actions beyond what humans can effectively understand and supervise.

“Left unstructured and uncontrolled, AI will do varied things,” Stillwell said. “Some good, some very bad.”

About Pegasystems (NASDAQ:PEGA)Pegasystems Inc is a software company specializing in customer engagement and digital process automation solutions. Headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Pegasystems develops enterprise applications designed to help organizations streamline operations, manage customer interactions and automate complex workflows. Its platform supports a wide range of use cases, from sales and marketing optimization to case management and robotic process automation.

The core of Pegasystems' offering is the Pega Platform, a low-code development environment that enables businesses to build and deploy applications with minimal hand-coding.

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Michael N. Intrator, the CEO and president of CoreWeave, Inc. (CRWV -0.97%), reported the sale of 307,692 shares of Class A Common Stock on August 11, according to a recent SEC Form 4 filing.

Transaction summaryMetricValueTransaction value$27.4 millionShares sold (total)307,692Shares sold (directly)200,000Shares sold (indirectly)107,692Post-transaction shares (directly held)1,876,815Transaction value based on SEC Form 4 weighted average sale price ($89.18); post-transaction value based on the August 11 market close ($90.32).

Key questionsWhat is the context for the pricing and timing of this disposition?
Shares were sold at a weighted-average price of $89.18 per share on a date when the company's one-year total return was down by about 30%. As of the August 12, 2026 market close, the stock was priced at $107.73, so it's since recovered a fair amount of losses.What remaining equity exposure does the CEO maintain in the company?
Following this transaction, Michael N. Intrator maintains roughly 1.9 million directly held shares and substantial derivative holdings of 21.9 million direct and 30 million indirect securities.Who are the indirect beneficial owners associated with the remaining holdings?
Indirect equity exposure remains through derivative securities held by the reporting person's spouse, the PMI 2024 F&F GRAT, the Intrator Family GST-Exempt Trust, and the Intrator Family Trust.Company OverviewMetricValueShare Price (as of market close 2026-08-12)$107.73Market Capitalization$58.8 billionRevenue (TTM)$6.2 billionNet Income (TTM)-$1.6 billionCompany SnapshotCoreWeave operates a specialized cloud computing platform providing high-performance GPU and CPU compute resources, storage solutions, advanced networking capabilities, and fully managed services designed to support generative AI and intensive compute workloads for large enterprises.The company generates revenue through flexible consumption-based pricing models, offering clients the choice between virtual servers and bare-metal infrastructure solutions tailored to their computational requirements.CoreWeave serves large enterprises and organizations requiring substantial computational capacity for generative AI applications, machine learning workloads, and data-intensive processing operations.CoreWeave is a specialized infrastructure provider serving the high-growth generative AI market, with $6.2 billion in TTM revenue and a market capitalization of $58.8 billion. The company's competitive positioning centers on delivering purpose-built GPU and CPU infrastructure optimized for AI workloads, addressing the critical infrastructure gap created by surging demand for generative AI capabilities among enterprise customers. Despite current net losses of $1.6 billion TTM, CoreWeave's substantial revenue base and market valuation reflect investor confidence in the structural growth of AI infrastructure demand.

What this transaction means for investorsIntrator sold about 308,000 shares but still holds tens of millions more through direct stock, options, and family trusts, so this trim, priced below where the stock closed, is a sliver of a co-founder's stake rather than a retreat from it. The sale barely registers against the position he keeps.

What actually matters is the machine he's built and how it's paid for. CoreWeave grew second-quarter revenue 112% to $2.6 billion, doubled adjusted EBITDA to $1.5 billion, and sits on a contracted backlog above $100 billion, the kind of demand that led management to raise full-year guidance again. Alongside the latest earnings report, Intrator said the company "reached an important inflection point this quarter as our scale began to translate into expanding operating leverage." The other side of that growth is roughly $35 billion in debt, taken on to buy Nvidia chips and build the data centers that revenue runs through, so CoreWeave is racing to convert breakneck expansion into profits before borrowing costs catch up. That race is key to the investment thesis now. Bond markets recently priced real odds of trouble here, and this quarter pushed back on them, but a company still losing money on a $35 billion debt load lives or dies by whether the backlog keeps converting.

Jonathan Ponciano has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

Sachin Jain, the chief operating officer of the firm, reported a sale of 13,608 shares of CoreWeave, Inc. (CRWV -0.97%) on August 10, according to an SEC Form 4 filing.

Transaction summaryMetricValueTransaction value$1.3 millionShares sold13,608Post-transaction shares (directly held)147,785Post-transaction value$13.03 millionTransaction value based on SEC Form 4 weighted average sale price ($92.09); post-transaction value based on the August 10 market close ($88.19).

Key questionsWhat were the primary drivers behind this disposal?
The transaction was primarily conducted to meet tax liabilities incurred from the vesting of restricted stock units. This suggests the sale was part of the company's structured compensation plan rather than a discretionary trading decision by the executive based on market conditions.How does this impact the insider's total exposure to the company?
Despite the 8% reduction in direct Class A Common Stock holdings, Jain maintains significant equity alignment with 148,000 shares and 270,000 derivative securities. This remaining stake indicates a continued interest in the firm's operational performance and long-term valuation.What is the context of the stock's recent performance?
The transaction was executed at $92.09 per share, occurring in a period where CoreWeave shares have seen a steep decline over the 12-month period ending on the August 10 transaction date.Company OverviewMetricValueShare Price (as of market close 2026-08-10)$88.19Market Capitalization$50 billionRevenue (TTM)$6.2 billionNet Income (TTM)-$1.6 billionCompany SnapshotCoreWeave provides a specialized cloud computing platform delivering high-performance GPU and CPU compute resources, storage solutions, advanced networking capabilities, and fully managed services designed to support generative AI and intensive compute workloads for enterprise clients.The company generates revenue through a consumption-based cloud services model, offering flexible virtual servers and bare-metal infrastructure options that enable enterprises to scale compute resources according to their specific workload requirements.CoreWeave primarily serves large enterprises and organizations requiring substantial computational capacity for generative AI applications, machine learning workloads, and data-intensive operations across multiple industry verticals.CoreWeave operates as a specialized infrastructure-as-a-service provider focused on the high-performance computing segment, with a market capitalization of $50 billion and TTM revenue of $6.2 billion. The company's competitive positioning centers on delivering optimized GPU and CPU infrastructure specifically architected for generative AI workloads, addressing the growing demand from enterprises seeking dedicated, high-performance alternatives to general-purpose cloud providers. Despite current net losses of $1.6 billion TTM, CoreWeave's substantial revenue base and market valuation reflect investor confidence in the secular growth trajectory of AI infrastructure demand.

What this transaction means for investorsOne day before CoreWeave told investors how the second quarter went, its operating chief exercised stock options and sold a portion to cover the tax. Jain kept the vast majority of his holdings, so the move itself is unremarkable, but CoreWeave is in the middle of proving itself after successfully pivoting from an Ethereum crypto-mining firm to a GPU infrastructure provider for artificial intelligence, which now sees the firm racing to fill orders already on the books.

That race is going well, but carries some risk. CoreWeave grew quarterly revenue 112% to $2.6 billion against a backlog that now tops $100 billion, but a large share of that backlog traces to a handful of enormous customers, with Microsoft and OpenAI among the biggest. So the operation Jain oversees is scaling well while leaning on a short list of buyers. Still, management raised guidance and keeps signing new commitments, which widens that base over time.

Jonathan Ponciano has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

David Brock Denton, EVP and general counsel of Cintas Corporation (CTAS -0.33%), disposed of 3,479 shares on August 10, according to an SEC Form 4 filing.

Transaction summaryMetricValueTransaction value$705,000Shares sold (directly held)3,479Post-transaction shares29,069Post-transaction shares (directly held)28,096Post-transaction shares (indirectly held)973Transaction value based on SEC Form 4 weighted average sale price ($202.71); post-transaction value based on the August 10 market close ($202.71).

Key questionsWhat was the catalyst for this specific disposition?
The transaction was a non-discretionary transfer to satisfy tax withholding requirements triggered by the vesting of 5,718 restricted shares previously granted under the Cintas Corporation Equity Compensation Plan.What is the extent of the executive's remaining direct and indirect exposure?
Denton retains direct ownership of 28,096 shares and indirect ownership of 973 shares through a 401(k) plan, representing a total ownership stake of less than 0.01% in the company.Are there additional equity incentives that could impact future ownership levels?
The reporting owner holds additional direct derivative securities, representing options outstanding, including vested and unvested awards, which vest in annual one-third increments starting on the third anniversary of the grant date.Does this transaction reflect a change in management's outlook on the stock?
Because this disposition was non-discretionary and used to cover automatic tax obligations related to equity compensation, it does not reflect the insider's independent view on the stock's valuation or current performance.Company OverviewMetricValueShare Price (as of market close 2026-08-11)$205.28Market Capitalization$82.1 billionRevenue (TTM)$11.3 billionNet Income (TTM)$2.0 billionCompany SnapshotCintas Corporation provides professional uniform rental and maintenance services, first aid and safety solutions, and facility services, generating revenue primarily through recurring service contracts across the United States, Canada, and Latin America.The company operates a subscription-based business model where customers pay recurring fees for uniform rental, cleaning, and maintenance services, supplemented by sales of first aid and safety products and facility services.Cintas serves a diverse customer base, including manufacturing facilities, healthcare institutions, hospitality businesses, and other commercial enterprises requiring professional workwear and safety solutions.Cintas Corporation is a leading specialty business services provider with a market capitalization of $82.1 billion and TTM revenues of $11.3 billion, demonstrating substantial scale and market presence. The company's diversified service portfolio and recurring revenue model provide stable cash flows and competitive advantages through high customer switching costs and operational efficiency. With 48,100 employees and established operations across North America and Latin America, Cintas maintains a strong market position in the professional services sector.

What this transaction means for investorsThe insider pattern with Cintas this week was clear. At least five executives had stock vest and gave a piece of it back for taxes on the same day, with Denton in this case keeping about 28,000 shares. When the CEO, chairman, CFO, operating chief, and top lawyer all file the same routine withholding at once, it basically just says the company granted equity on a common schedule; in other words, it certainly doesn't signal anything about their view of the firm.

The business under all those filings, meanwhile, is in good shape. Cintas grew revenue nearly 9% last fiscal year and reached a record 51% gross margin, extending a steady growth record. The item on Denton's desk that matters most to shareholders is the pending acquisition of UniFirst, a deal his legal team is shepherding through an FTC second request, the regulator's signal that it wants a harder look before letting the industry leader buy a sizable rival. Whether that deal clears is an open question, and that's what an investor worried about Cintas should actually be looking at.

Jonathan Ponciano has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool recommends Cintas. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

On Aug. 26, the otherwise extremely fast-paced Wall Street will slow down and pay close attention as Nvidia (NVDA -0.06%) reports its financial results for the second quarter of its fiscal year 2027, which ended on July 26 (Nvidia's fiscal years do not match calendar years). Since the company is at the very center of the artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure build-out, thanks to its dominance in the GPU (Graphics Processing Unit) market, Nvidia's quarterly updates have become critical to gauging the health of the AI industry and where it might be headed next. Nvidia has outperformed the broader market so far this year, but which way will the stock move post-earnings? My view is that Nvidia's shares are likely to decline. Here are two reasons why.

Image source: The Motley Fool.

1. Wall Street has adjusted its expectations
Even Nvidia's internal projections have constantly underestimated the company's ability to capitalize on the AI boom. Over the past few years, the semiconductor specialist has, as a rule, delivered earnings beats. The market cheered these performances in the early days of the ongoing AI revolution. However, it has become accustomed to them. Now, investors expect Nvidia to beat its own revenue and earnings guidance and analyst estimates, which means that's already baked into the stock price.

That doesn't mean Nvidia's shares can't jump post-earnings, but that would require an extraordinary beat-and-raise quarter. On the other hand, Wall Street will shrug -- at best -- if Nvidia posts revenue and earnings just slightly above expectations. The stock may even decline as a result.

2. A major pre-earnings run-up
Earnings season has shown that the AI boom is still in full swing. Several leaders in the field have posted outstanding financial results. For instance, the hyperscalers -- or leading cloud computing providers -- all saw accelerating cloud sales growth. These are among Nvidia's largest customers, so their results tell us something about how the chipmaker may perform. We can also point to CoreWeave (CRWV -0.97%), a company that builds and runs data centers tailored for AI.

CoreWeave buys racks of Nvidia's hardware. So if CoreWeave is performing well and increasing investments in the business, that's a great sign for Nvidia. That seems to be what's happening. CoreWeave's second-quarter results were excellent, with the company's revenue and backlog soaring compared to the year-ago period.

All of this suggests that Nvidia also performed well in its latest quarter, and the market knows it. Nvidia's shares have risen significantly over the past couple of weeks or so -- they are up almost 19% since July 29. As a result, it'll be even harder for Nvidia to impress Wall Street on Aug. 26.

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Should you give up on the stock?
Investors should focus on whether Nvidia can perform well over the long run, not whether the company can post strong enough financial results during its upcoming quarter for the stock to experience a post-earnings jump. And there are good reasons to think the tech leader still has a significant runway for growth. AI infrastructure spending doesn't seem to be slowing down much.

That's why many companies in the field are beating expectations. Meanwhile, Nvidia remains the leader in the GPU niche and has expanded into new areas. The agentic AI boom may drive sustained demand for CPUs (Central Processing Units), and Nvidia is poised to capitalize on it, having launched its Vera CPU. That's just one opportunity it could tap into. Beyond supplying the chips that power AI, Nvidia offers a host of other services that allow companies to deploy, run, and manage AI applications effectively.

That puts the company in a strong position to benefit from the industry's continued growth. Now, will Nvidia post the same kind of returns it did during the first couple of years of the AI boom? That's highly unlikely. But the stock can still be an above-average performer over the long term.

Curaleaf (CURLF -2.07%) just made one thing clear: Consolidation is back on the cannabis industry's agenda. The U.S. cannabis giant recently launched an unsolicited $272 million bid to acquire Aurora Cannabis (ACB -2.90%), offering $4 per share, a roughly 45% premium to Aurora's 30-day volume-weighted average price.

Curaleaf believes the combined company could generate approximately $1.5 billion in annual revenue, $350 million in adjusted EBITDA, and at least $40 million in annual cost synergies. It's not a bad move, to be sure. But this does beg the question: Could Canopy Growth (CGC +0.99%) also become an acquisition target? It's certainly possible, but there are reasons to be cautious.

What Canopy brings to the table
Unlike Aurora, which has spent the past several years rebuilding its business around international medical cannabis, Canopy is still in the middle of its own turnaround. The company has reduced debt, exited noncore businesses, and shifted its focus toward higher-margin medical cannabis while maintaining strategic exposure to the U.S. market through Canopy USA. It also strengthened its balance sheet earlier this year through a recapitalization that significantly reduced debt.

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Canopy also brings something many potential buyers would find attractive: an established global medical cannabis platform, recognized consumer brands, and operations spanning Canada, Germany, Australia, and several other international markets. But that doesn't necessarily mean Canopy is an obvious fit for every potential acquirer.

Its corporate structure remains more complex than many peers because of its U.S. cannabis holdings, and integrating another large Canadian producer would be a significant undertaking. Any buyer would also need to decide whether Canopy's international assets justify the purchase price and execution risk.

Image source: Getty Images.

The bigger takeaway may not be whether Canopy is next. Cannabis companies are once again looking for scale. After years of oversupply, pricing pressure, and limited access to capital, some operators are discovering that acquiring established businesses may be faster than building new ones.

Whether Canopy ultimately receives an offer remains uncertain. But as the industry matures, companies with established medical cannabis businesses, international distribution, and recognizable brands are becoming increasingly valuable. Canopy checks many of those boxes.

Universal Display NASDAQ: OLED President and CEO Steve Abramson said the OLED industry’s continued investment in new manufacturing capacity reflects panel makers’ confidence in long-term adoption, even as smartphone demand faces near-term pressure from higher component and memory costs.

Speaking at the Oppenheimer Annual Technology, Internet, and Communications Conference, Abramson said the industry must distinguish between current consumer-market conditions and multiyear capacity decisions. He described recent smartphone demand as more cautious, particularly in segments sensitive to device affordability, but said investments in OLED facilities are based on longer-term market opportunities.

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“The investments that we’re seeing now are multibillion, multiyear commitments to grow the OLED industry,” Abramson said. “Those decisions aren’t based on a couple of quarters of demand.”

OLED Capacity Targets IT and Automotive Growth Abramson said OLED penetration in smartphones has reached about 65%, compared with virtually no presence 15 years ago. He characterized other end markets as earlier in their adoption cycles, citing OLED penetration of roughly 5% in information technology products and about 1% in automotive applications.

He said new Gen 8.6 capacity is being built to support greater OLED use in notebooks, laptops, tablets and monitors. The industry has committed more than $20 billion toward expanding OLED capacity, according to Abramson. He noted that Samsung and BOE have recently begun mass production at Gen 8.6 facilities, while Visionox and China Star, or CSOT, continue advancing greenfield fabs. LG Display and Samsung are also expanding Gen 6 capacity, he said.

Universal Display expects broader adoption as capacity becomes available and original equipment manufacturers expand OLED across their product portfolios. Abramson said larger displays can support streaming, work and other uses, while OLED technology offers image quality, response times, deep blacks, viewing angles and power-efficiency benefits.

On the company’s outlook for the second half of 2026, Abramson said Universal Display expects seasonal factors, product launches, expanding OLED IT deployments and holiday-related electronics demand to support stronger results than the first half. However, he said the outlook could be affected if product introductions are delayed or underperform, consumer demand remains weak, or macroeconomic uncertainty continues to weigh on spending.

AI Could Support Demand for Power Efficiency Abramson said artificial intelligence is relevant to the OLED market because AI-related applications increase the importance of power efficiency, including in devices used at the network edge such as smartphones, tablets and monitors. He said the company’s phosphorescent OLED materials are designed to support power efficiency.

The company is also using artificial intelligence and machine-learning tools internally to accelerate materials development, according to Abramson. He said Universal Display began investing in quantitative and machine-learning techniques about a decade ago and now has a team working alongside experimental scientists to develop materials more quickly.

While OLED remains the company’s primary focus, Abramson said Universal Display is beginning to explore adjacent organic-electronics opportunities, including organic solar cells. He emphasized that these efforts are at an early “seed planting” stage and are not expected to yield a new business in the near term.

Multiple Paths for Phosphorescent Blue Abramson said the OLED industry’s growing number of applications has created multiple potential routes to commercializing phosphorescent blue materials. Different product categories, including watches, smartphones, IT products, automotive displays and televisions, have differing requirements for efficiency, color performance, lifetime and manufacturability, he said.

Power efficiency remains the leading consideration, Abramson said, though color point and lifetime have become increasingly important for certain applications. He said customers are considering combinations of phosphorescent and fluorescent materials, including phosphor-sensitized fluorescence, or PSF, to balance these performance requirements.

Universal Display is pursuing both PSF architectures and pure blue phosphorescence, Abramson said. He declined to identify which product category could first adopt phosphorescent blue, saying that decision will rest with customers. Still, he said the company sees interest across virtually every display category because reduced power consumption can improve battery life in mobile products and lower energy use in larger displays.

Competition, IP and Capital Allocation Addressing competition from China-based Summer Sprout, Abramson said competition is not new for Universal Display and pointed to the company’s scientific expertise, manufacturing operations in the United States and Ireland, intellectual-property portfolio, customer relationships and continued technology investment. He said the company opened its Chengdu Technology Innovation Center in China to strengthen customer collaboration, adding to facilities in Korea and Hong Kong.

Abramson said protecting intellectual property is important to the company, including outside China. He did not provide additional detail on differences between the company’s intellectual-property position in China and other markets.

On capital allocation, Abramson said Universal Display prioritizes investment in organic growth and innovation, strategic opportunities that align with its long-term strategy, and shareholder returns through dividends and share repurchases. The company initiated its dividend in 2017 and has increased it annually, he said.

He also noted that a $100 million repurchase authorization announced in April 2025 was fully used through the first quarter of 2026. In April 2026, the company announced a new $400 million authorization.

Abramson said investors may be overly focused on the timing of phosphorescent blue commercialization, while underappreciating the company’s existing position and cash-generation capabilities. He said the central issue over the next year will be whether cautious consumer demand transitions into the next phase of OLED adoption.

About Universal Display (NASDAQ:OLED)Universal Display Corporation NASDAQ: OLED is a technology company specializing in organic light-emitting diode (OLED) solutions. The company develops and commercializes materials, technologies and software used in the creation of OLED displays and lighting. Its offerings include proprietary phosphorescent OLED (PHOLED) materials, display driver integrated circuits and process technologies that enable higher efficiency, longer lifetimes and improved color performance for a range of display and lighting applications.

Universal Display's core business is licensing its extensive OLED patent portfolio to display manufacturers and providing them with the key organic materials needed for device fabrication.

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Space Exploration Technologies (SPCX -0.91%) generated $18.7 billion in revenue in 2025. Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk just predicted that the company will hit $100 billion in annual recurring revenue (ARR) by the end of this year, and $1 trillion in revenue by 2030. That would be a more than a 50-fold increase in five years, mainly on the back of artificial intelligence (AI) data center sales.

No company has ever generated $1 trillion in revenue in a single year. How likely is it that SpaceX can achieve this number by 2030? Here's my honest take on whether SpaceX stock is a buy today.

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Less space, more AI SpaceX just went completed the largest initial public offering (IPO) in history. The company is known today for space services, but it's transitioning quickly into an AI infrastructure business. Capital expenditures were $19 billion across the business last quarter, mainly attributable to building data centers for AI.

Musk, unsurprisingly, is being aggressive in building out data centers to serve the AI market. The company has signed deals with the likes of Alphabet and Anthropic that could get ARR up to $100 billion by December, Musk said on the company's first earnings call since the IPO earlier this month.

By the end of next year, Musk expects to bring on between 15 and 20 gigawatts (GW) of electric power capacity for SpaceX's current and future AI data centers. With the cost of bringing on a gigawatt of capacity approaching $50 billion, it will take enormous capital spending for SpaceX to deliver on its plans.

Since AI compute is a hot commodity at the moment, SpaceX can sign lucrative deals with third parties to lease out this computing power, even if those third parties are competitors to the company's own AI software services, such as Anthropic.

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk. Image source: The White House.

Long-term, SpaceX is developing a data center concept that will operate in Earth orbit to save on power costs by using solar arrays outside Earth's atmosphere. Along with the terrestrial data centers, Musk and SpaceX believe there will be enough demand for AI software to reach $1 trillion in revenue by 2030. That's an audacious plan, to say the least.

Risks and profit margins Some revenue will come from other services provided by SpaceX, such as its Starlink internet and rocket launch contracts for third parties. However, if revenue hits $1 trillion in 2030, the vast majority of SpaceX's business will be AI data center contracts.

Right now, SpaceX is getting a nice level of revenue from such infrastructure deals, and likely with good margins. However, there is a risk that the AI spending boom could turn into a bust if demand for AI services does not meet these projections. This could lead SpaceX to build a gargantuan number of AI data centers as demand dries up.

SPCX Capital Expenditures (Quarterly) data by YCharts.

Today, SpaceX trades at a market cap of $1.9 trillion. In an ultra-bullish scenario, this $1 trillion in cloud computing revenue by 2030 could translate into hundreds of billions in earnings, at least compared to the competition, whose profit margins hover at about 30%. That might make the stock cheap for anyone buying right now.

However, investors should be skeptical of Musk's promises, especially when it means revenue increasing 50-fold in five years. Musk is notorious for making financial projections or product launches that only materialize years after his deadlines, and I think this $1 trillion revenue projection by 2030 is one of them.

Avoid buying SpaceX stock for this reason.

Ocugen NASDAQ: OCGN is positioning its ophthalmology gene therapy portfolio around treatments for inherited retinal diseases and dry age-related macular degeneration, with pivotal-stage programs in retinitis pigmentosa, Stargardt disease and geographic atrophy, Chairman, CEO and Co-Founder Shankar Musunuri said during a Canaccord discussion.

Musunuri said the company is targeting biologics license applications, or BLAs, next year for its retinitis pigmentosa and Stargardt programs, while its geographic atrophy program is expected to follow on a longer timeline. He said the company’s objective is to pursue approvals in major markets, including the U.S., Europe and Japan, and to improve patient access in parallel with regulatory work.

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Modifier Gene Therapy Platform
Ocugen’s approach differs from gene-specific therapies by using “modifier genes,” which Musunuri described as genes that regulate networks of functions in retinal cells. The company’s technology originated from work by Dr. Neena Haider at Harvard, according to Musunuri.

For retinitis pigmentosa, Ocugen is developing OCU400, which uses the Nr2e3 modifier gene. Musunuri said Nr2e3 affects phototransduction pathways, which are particularly relevant in retinitis pigmentosa as patients can lose peripheral and night vision before central vision.

For Stargardt disease and geographic atrophy, Ocugen is developing treatments using the RORA modifier gene. Musunuri said RORA is intended to regulate multiple disease-related pathways, including oxidative stress, lipid metabolism, inflammation and the complement system. He said the company believes the therapy may help restore cellular homeostasis and create a healthier environment for retinal cells.

Musunuri said Ocugen’s intellectual property extends beyond ophthalmology into neurological applications, though he characterized that area as a future opportunity.

Stargardt and Geographic Atrophy Programs
OCU410ST, the company’s Stargardt disease candidate, is in a Phase II/III study enrolling patients ages 3 and older, from early through advanced stages of disease. Musunuri said the study was endorsed by the European Medicines Agency and that the FDA allowed Ocugen to convert its Phase II study into a combined Phase II/III trial following a small Phase I study.

The company expects top-line data from the Stargardt study in the second quarter of next year, Musunuri said. Ocugen then plans to file a BLA and pursue market authorization in parallel within several months of the results. If development proceeds according to plan, he said approval and launch could occur in 2028.

Musunuri contrasted the program with oral therapies that may target individual disease pathways and require ongoing dosing. He said Ocugen’s subretinal gene therapy is designed as a one-time administration, while emphasizing that efficacy and safety data will determine its potential differentiation.

OCU410, Ocugen’s geographic atrophy candidate, uses the same RORA construct as OCU410ST but at a different dose, Musunuri said. The geographic atrophy program has received the FDA’s Regenerative Medicine Advanced Therapy, or RMAT, designation. He said the company has received FDA clearance to begin a single Phase III trial and is working with the EMA to align the study as a global trial.

Retinitis Pigmentosa Readout and Filing Plans
Ocugen expects first-quarter top-line data next year from its Phase III trial of OCU400 in retinitis pigmentosa. The study includes 140 patients, uses a 2:1 treatment-to-control ratio and covers more than 30 mutations, according to Musunuri.

The primary assessment uses a mobility test designed to measure patients’ ability to navigate under low-light conditions. Musunuri said the company refined the test with FDA input and also plans to track low-luminance visual acuity as a secondary and longer-term measure. He said the company observed approximately two lines of low-luminance visual acuity improvement in treated eyes among Phase I/II patients over three years.

Musunuri said Ocugen has treated more than 325 patients across its clinical trials and expanded-access program, including more than 200 patients with retinitis pigmentosa. He said the company has not observed serious adverse events related to its gene therapy programs in those populations.

On manufacturing, Musunuri said Ocugen has completed process performance qualification validation runs needed for an OCU400 BLA submission and has commercial-scale material that could be used for supply. The company expects to complete the BLA within months after the Phase III data. Under RMAT, it may be eligible for a rolling submission, although Musunuri said the final clinical module would start the FDA review clock.

Capital Runway and Commercialization
Musunuri said a recently announced $130 million convertible note financing is expected to fund Ocugen into 2028. He said overall spending is not expected to increase substantially next year because recruitment for two Phase III programs was completed this year, while the geographic atrophy study begins.

The company is also evaluating regional partnerships and non-dilutive funding opportunities, particularly outside the U.S., Musunuri said. He said Ocugen intends to remain opportunistic regarding U.S. commercialization and may consider additional equity financing if needed to support a U.S. launch.

About Ocugen (NASDAQ:OCGN)Ocugen Inc is a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company focused on discovering, developing and commercializing gene therapies to treat rare inherited retinal diseases, as well as vaccines designed to address unmet needs in infectious diseases. Headquartered in Malvern, Pennsylvania, the company applies its proprietary gene therapy platform to create novel treatments aimed at preserving and restoring vision, while leveraging strategic partnerships to broaden its vaccine pipeline.

In its gene therapy portfolio, Ocugen is advancing multiple programs targeting retinal disorders.

This instant news alert was generated by narrative science technology and financial data from MarketBeat in order to provide readers with the fastest reporting and unbiased coverage. Please send any questions or comments about this story to [email protected].

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Space Exploration Technologies (SPCX -0.91%) has taken investors on a rough ride since its initial public offering (IPO) in June. After reaching an all-time intraday high of $225.64 on June 16, the stock later fell below its $135 IPO price, sinking at one point to a low of $104.83. The stock has this month recovered back to around the IPO price, but it still sits well below $150, the price at which it opened its first day of public trading.

Image source: Getty Images.

That said, the company's financial performance is improving. In the second quarter, SpaceX's revenue surged 92% year over year to $7.8 billion, while adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (EBITDA) rose 191% to $3.5 billion.

Analysts have also been sharply raising their expectations for the company's future revenue and now expect SpaceX to generate roughly $102 billion in revenue in 2027, up from about $72 billion at the end of July 2026.

Here's why SpaceX stock can reach roughly $220 by June 2027, representing about 50.5% upside from its Aug. 12 closing price.

Starlink is the profit engine, but AI is growing faster
The connectivity segment, which includes the Starlink satellite internet business, remains SpaceX's profit engine. That segment generated $4.3 billion in revenue and $1.7 billion in operating income in the second quarter. Starlink's subscribers doubled year over year to 12 million.

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SpaceX's artificial intelligence (AI) business is growing even faster, with revenue rising almost 247% year over year to $2.6 billion in the quarter. While AI accounted for nearly one-third of SpaceX's total sales, the segment reported a $1.3 billion operating loss. SpaceX also spent $15.8 billion on AI capital expenditures in the second quarter.

The company's massive investments in infrastructure could pay off if analyst forecasts prove accurate. Analysts at Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley have projected that SpaceX could generate around $160 billion in revenue and $110 billion in adjusted EBITDA in 2028.

How SpaceX stock could reach $220
By June 2027, SpaceX's share price will most likely reflect investors' expectations for the company's 2028 growth.

Following its IPO, SpaceX had roughly 13.2 billion shares outstanding. The company's pending $60 billion all-stock acquisition of Cursor AI's parent company Anysphere could add close to 410 million shares based on the Aug. 12 closing share price. However, the actual share issuance will depend on where they are priced at the time the transaction is finalized.

SpaceX also has hundreds of millions of shares underlying outstanding employee stock options and restricted stock units, which will create additional dilution over time. In light of that, assuming that it will have 13.7 billion shares outstanding at the end of June 2027 provides a reasonable adjustment to anticipate additional dilution.

SpaceX was trading at about 18.9 times expected 2027 sales as of Aug. 12. If the company generates the roughly $160 billion in 2028 revenue projected by Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley and continues trading at that multiple, its market value would reach about $3 trillion. Dividing the market capitalization by the assumed 13.7 billion shares implies a stock price of roughly $220.

However, the biggest risk is SpaceX's enormous capital spending. The company's capital expenditures reached $18.4 billion in the second quarter, more than twice its revenue in the period. If investments in AI infrastructure and the next-generation reusable rocket system Starship fail to generate strong returns, investors could become less willing to give SpaceX stock the premium valuation it currently carries.

But if SpaceX delivers results near Wall Street's 2028 forecasts while maintaining a valuation close to current levels, the stock could generate significant returns for shareholders by the end of June 2027.

In this episode of Motley Fool Hidden Gems Investing, Motley Fool contributors Tyler Crowe, Travis Hoium, and Lou Whiteman discuss:

Palantir's earnings and guidance.The case for model-agnostic AI.Caterpillar's incredible quarter.Is Spotify a growth stock or a value stock?To catch full episodes of all The Motley Fool's free podcasts, check out our podcast center. When you're ready to invest, check out this top 10 list of stocks to buy.

A full transcript is below.

This podcast was recorded on Aug. 4, 2026.

Tyler Crowe: Palantir takes shots at OpenAI and Anthropic today on Motley Fool Hidden Gems Investing. Welcome to Motley Fool Hidden Gems Investing. I'm your host, Tyler Crowe. Today, I'm joined by longtime Fools Lou Whiteman, Travis Hoium, doing a little bit of mixing it up everyone's getting those last-minute summer vacations in before the kids got to go back to school. We'll probably see a lot of host shuffling and guest shuffling over the next couple of weeks.

We are deep in earnings season, and we had three really big earnings reports today, a lot of contrasting things going on in the market. We want to start today with Palantir because, as we're recording, shares are up 26%. The company reported earnings after the close yesterday that beat expectations handily. They increased guidance. Everything looked pretty good. Now, there's been a lot of beat expect earnings so far this season, guys, but I have yet to see one that's really resulted in the market celebrating like we have seen with this one. What exactly was it about Palantir's earnings?

Lou Whiteman: They just blew it out of the park. They just had fantastic results. This is a company with a lot of hubris, and sometimes the hubris is justified. Ninety-three percent year over year, top-line growth. If you want to look trailing 12 months, 79% growth, so this isn't an anomaly, 51% cash flow margins. That's fantastic. The question forever here has been, there's no way you can justify the valuation here if it's a defense contractor. For all our jokes about the Pentagon budget, the Pentagon just doesn't spend money at the rate needed to justify Palantir's valuation. Commercial had been the laggard, but commercial was up 150%. This is exactly what you want.

Travis, I'm curious, what do you think? I can squint and maybe see remaining performance obligations were flat? So maybe that might be a dent, but even then, commercial is different than government, so that could be an adjustment, but I don't know. Tell me what's wrong here? This is just fantastic.

Travis Hoium: It's hard to quibble with any of the numbers. It is always hard for me to wrap my head around a company that's trading for 60 times sales because it's been over 100 times sales in the past year, so that typically does not end well for investors. But if you compound your revenue at 100% year over year for multiple years, it takes that multiple down pretty quickly. That's part of what we're seeing is just they are executing on exactly what the market has been pricing in for quite a while. As the shares have pulled back over the past few months, maybe we are going to see a little bit of a slowdown, and then they went, You know what? No, we're going to accelerate that revenue growth. Hard to quibble with anything.

Lou said the biggest number that jumped out to me: its 150% jump in U.S. commercial revenue. Customers aren't growing that quickly, so that means that the customers they do have are spending more. That's impressive because it shows that they're not just testing it out and going, Nah, we're not seeing any value here. They're actually saying, You know what? We want more from you guys.

Tyler Crowe: I think it's fair to say that CEO Palantir Alex Karp is a bit of an acquired taste for investors. Some people absolutely love him, some people might find him a bit off-putting with bombastic language, sometimes a little bit more aggressive and combative than a lot of other CEOs that you see in the market. You see it in his shareholder letters. You see it on the conference call, and he did use that aggressive language a little bit when talking about the large language model developers like OpenAI and Anthropic.

But I think he did get at a core point that he was talking about, and something that I think companies are really going to be thinking about, and it could really determine a lot of what happens in this AI race lately. It's the building model agnostic AI tools, similar to what Palantir does, versus these models that OpenAI and Anthropic are doing that end up in some sense, building competing tools from their own customers after they've built a lot of their own data.

One of the questions I have is does he have a point, and does that really bode well for the future of Palantir where they can make this argument that says, Hey, do you not want OpenAI and Anthropic taking your data and building your own competitor while you feed them their data? Come to us. Is that a valid sales argument or is that just being defensive?

Travis Hoium: It's all of the above. It's their sales argument. He's talking his book, he's talking their business model, and he's trying to sell to customers and you see similar things from Satya Nadella at Microsoft. But the way that he's talking about this, I just want to quote from the shareholder letter. "The models have grown and thrived by essentially ingesting the entire written work product of our civilization and those models, as well as their creators now have their site set on global industry. We have been the beneficiary of the revolt that is underway against submission of this way of working." That is basically declaring war against Anthropic and OpenAI. That is what Karp is doing here, and it's fascinating to see these business models play out because everybody is trying to win this AI game. That's what we've got to watch. Who is actually going to get the customers, who's going to get the revenue, who's going to generate free cash flow? Palantir is making their case, and they're making a pretty good one.

Lou Whiteman: You can always tell the CEOs who are classics majors, can't you? Stuff like that. Look, one read on this is he's worried that those models can do what Palantir can do, and this is actually a sign of weakness. I don't know if that's the case. I think you can make the case either way that the frontier models strengthen Palantir, or they are a threat. The thing that strikes me, though, is we know Palantir valuation. We know what Anthropic hopes to get and what OpenAI. Can they all exist together? Is there a zero-sum game here or a less-than-whole game? I feel like at some point, something has to flinch, and Palantir does have the advantage, I guess, with their installed base.

Tyler Crowe: And to that point, too, Travis, you were talking Satya Nadella, talking about competing models and a lot of this. One of the things that he had mentioned in previous discussions, conference calls, whatever, is basically custom tailoring the type of model that you need and custom fit to what the actual particular task is. Where we're using these generic, most powerful models in the world that cost a ton of money to, I don't know, organize your calendar, isn't exactly like the best use of resources and stuff like that. It'll be interesting to see the resource allocation, and I think that might be where they all make sense because they can fit a certain resource allocation for a business. Maybe we're less expensive, but we don't take on the biggest tasks sort of thing. That's how this works in a world where everyone works in some way or another versus having only one winner in this open eye race. But speaking about OpenAI, we’re going to talk about one of the pick-and-shovel companies that’s doing spectacularly well. That's Caterpillar, after break.

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Tyler Crowe: Moving on to other companies that are reporting earnings recently and doing incredibly well, it was Caterpillar. Earlier today, Caterpillar posted expectation-smashing results this past quarter, and the stock is up about 5.6 on the news as a result. It was up almost 10% in early morning trading. There was a lot to like here. I was looking through it, earnings across all of its segments were up. It looks like everything's doing incredibly well. Was that all the driving force? What were some of the things I might have missed when I did my first class, guys?

Travis Hoium: I think the big thing here is that when you're spending $1 trillion on building out data centers, there's a lot of demand to go around. I don't know if Caterpillar is the second derivative of the AI trade or the third derivative, but it is definitely downstream of all that spending that's going on because that infrastructure is a lot of physical stuff being built, and that's what Caterpillar does. The big thing that it was construction equipment that was up 35% from a year ago, but power energy and resources also did well. The crazy thing is you can think about this all as one big trait because these are all related things. The fact that energy is doing so well is because AI is doing so well. I don't know what to take from this lob besides the fact that just all this is like a huge rising tide that's lifting all of Caterpillar's boats.

Lou Whiteman: I think that's it, let's talk about why because obviously you don't buy a new dirt mover for each data center. You don't like, for every one of these things, we're going to buy all new equipment. But it's a lot like what John Deere with the farmers. We tend to see spending go up when it's a good year on the farm because the farmers are flush with cash, it's when they can. Similarly, with all of this demand, all these orders, this is causing the customers of Caterpillar to feel confident enough to place orders, to invest in their business. I think that's why you see the strength in construction. It wasn't just in the power systems. It wasn't just one thing. This is just the net impact of all of this cash, all of this investment going into the sector that they serve. showing itself in confidence to order heavy equipment. They boosted their full-year guidance, and they had a record equipment backlog. The backlog is a CAT, always something to watch because, again, you get a lot of orders when things are good, and then you see how long it lasts. But assuming that we don't stop building data centers, this is, again, just filling the industry they serve with cash, and you are going to see companies invest in their businesses when they can.

Tyler Crowe: So something it seems like we're kind of dancing around here, and we all know it is that Caterpillar is a cyclical business. Mining is doing really well. Orders go up. But all the end markets are very cyclical, power, construction, all of these things. My question is, obviously, AI is a big part of that cycle. Also there's some other aspects as well. We were talking before the show the idea of deglobalization and critical mineral mining, where it's being more localized and not dominated on a global scale, where you might see a lot not typically redundant wouldn't normally happen in a globalized world, but you're going to have a little bit more like redundant supply of construction materials because everyone wants to mine their own stuff and stuff like that. I don't know how big that is, but it's certainly something to be playing the part here.

My question is, we know it's cyclical, but could this just be an elongated cycle? Because it seems like normally with Caterpillar, one segment's doing relatively well, where its other end markets are weaker, but right now we're in a point where all three segments are posting great results.

Lou Whiteman: Look, this is why investing is hard. We can see something that looks obvious, but good luck getting the timing right. Should we do a shout-out or maybe someone check in on Michael Burry this morning? Because I agree with everything he's been saying about how it's all overvalued. But two of his biggest shorts were Palantir and Caterpillar. The timing is everything. Caterpillar right now feels like a microcosm for the entire market. It's cyclical. It's up 100% in a year. All of the signs are saying yeah, and it keeps working anyway. It will until it won't, and that's what makes investing hard.

Travis Hoium: The word that comes to mind is super cycle, and this is just part of that super cycle. All of that money that's flowing from those giant Silicon Valley companies is flowing to companies like Caterpillar. The question is, when does it stop? Or when does it even slow down? That's something that I've been thinking a lot about is, as long as capex is growing for these data centers, as long as there's more demand for power, more demand for minerals, all of these things are going to do extremely well. But what happens when growth flatlines or heaven forbid falls? That's when paying 38 times earnings for a company like Caterpillar is going to be really rough for investors. But we're not seeing it yet.

Tyler Crowe: It's not the most recent example, but certainly I think we can all remember, like the 2010, China's economic development growth boom, seven pot eight 9% annually was sending companies, mining companies, Caterpillar, companies like this to soaring heights because of demand was just voracious. But the minute we started to see a slowing Chinese economy and the slowing of the construction cycle, I would assume, like, yeah, 15, 16 years ago was the last, like, real super cycle with a lot of this stuff. It'll be interesting to see if this deglobalization in AI trade becomes the next big supercycle for these particular markets. Coming up after the break, one company that didn't do quite as good on the earnings perspective that's Spotify.

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Tyler Crowe: The three companies that we're talking about here today, Spotify's earnings were definitely one of these things is not like the other results. The company reported earnings after the close yesterday, and as we're right now, shares are relatively flat, but they were down quite a bit in early morning trading. The market seems to be doing it a little bit of a favor here. Now, Spotify hit some significant user milestones, total daily average users and things like that were way up, and margin expansion was exceptionally good, but it did miss expectations for revenue and earnings per share. Travis, I know you followed this company pretty intimately. Was this just some quarterly blip, or is this a trend in decelerating revenue and earnings?

Travis Hoium: This is what happens when a company goes from growth mode to we're now a mature company. The expectations are different, and the question is going to be, what do investors expect from the company? And then what are the investors that are going to be excited about that? Spotify grew their total monthly users by 12% year over year. This is a company that has 777 million monthly active users. That is a massive number. They're also continue to grow their premium revenue, 15%, but this is not going to be a company that's going to grow 20-plus percent year over year, like it maybe was a handful of years ago. You're going to be more focused on things like margins and free cash flow. That's not necessarily as exciting.

That said, management thinks that they can continue to grow their compound annual growth rate in that mid-teens range and get to a 20% operating margin. That's a pretty darn good business, the question is, what are you going to pay for it, and that seems to be the battle for investors today is a little bit like Caterpillar. If this is going to be just a mature cash-generating business, what do you pay for it? Is 31 times earnings the right number? Maybe it is, but you're going to have to decide what do you expect as an investor? Are you growth investor or a value investor?

Lou Whiteman: I'm always amazed when they find more people that don't have the service that they can add that way. Good on them for that. But Travis, I think you have it exactly right, is that sometimes with stocks, the stock isn't the problem. The investor base is that this is a fine company, but it is more mature than it used to. It's unlikely to be the growth story it was. It may take time for the investor base to just switch out, and that's going to cause volatility. I think it is a free cash flow store, and I think it has a great story to tell. I think it's a really attractive income/growth hybrid investment from here, but it is going to be a different story than it was. I don't think you're going to see the growth-focused crowd saying “Wow” to these results. That doesn't mean it was a bad quarter, though.

Tyler Crowe: This sounds similar to the conversation we've been having here on some Motley Fool Live events around, like Netflix, as well as, who is the investor anymore? Because these growth stories that all of a sudden are transitioning to, we're still growing just not at these nosebleed level growth that we had been putting we're now profitable. We're throwing off quite a bit of cash, it changes the type of investor that gets involved in these sort of companies. I don't want to prefaces of saying like, Spotify is a bad company now, it's just a different company into a different phase of its life. When I look at it, it's a solid company. It's generating a lot of free cash flow. Revenue right now high single digits. Maybe you're going to get low double digits on a growth surge, maybe a pricing increase. It's still a very quality business. But is that a company that merits 32 times, 33 times earnings? That's the question here. On that daily user growth, part of me almost says, "Is there no more worlds left to conquer?" Yes, it's growing, but it's become the dominant market share. As to lose point, like, who isn't using this service at this point?

Lou Whiteman: Funny, I'm not, so Spotify, call me. But I get it thrown in with my phone service. I guess there are at least one more world to cover. But Tyler, I think you're exactly right. I will say, shout-out to Spotify, because I think there's a better case here than there is for some. I'm going to get nasty letters, but Starbucks and some of these companies. I just think good company, bad stock. I think this is still a stock that works because I think it is a hybrid growth. I think they do have some levers to pull, but, yeah, I think that's it. That probably two things can be true here. It's still a good investable stock, but the valuation might need adjustment from here.

Travis Hoium: Yeah, 30 times earnings isn't crazy for a company that can continue to grow in the mid-teens. But I think you're right. How do you grow the business from here, and it's going to be a balance of how do you price a product where you have basically saturated the market? You're playing this game of do we want more monthly active users, or do we want a higher price per user? Because there is some elasticity in that market. You have competition from products like YouTube.

I think what we've learned with Spotify over the last few years is they're not going to be the next Google, for example, we're just going to keep tacking on new product after new product, add YouTube, add Waymo. Their ad product stinks that basically didn't grow year over year. That’s not a huge driver of their growth. Their video, I don't think is what they thought it maybe could be. It's just a solid business. It's just the kind of service that I'm going to sign up for and pay for for the next decade. As my kids get older, they'll eventually graduate into buying their own accounts. That's a good business. It can be fine for investors at 30 times earnings. I don't think it's a steal. If they ever get to the point where it's so cheap that they decide that they're going to buy back a whole bunch of stock, it could be really interesting, but this is going to be a little bit more ho-hum for investors, and a lot of times, that's not going to get a lot of headlines for you.

Tyler Crowe: It'll be interesting to see how you're saying that mid-teens growth, it's definitely worth playing. But as we were saying, not quite there yet, but there are some levers to pull, maybe fixing around the margins, ads, maybe figure out video. These are new initiatives, and some things aren't always perfect execution all the time. There is a path there, but not quite in the cards yet. A last question before we get out of here, guys, of the three companies we talked about today, Palantir, Caterpillar, Spotify, I think, based on what I've heard, I've gotten a good idea, which of these three companies is most attractive to you right now?

Lou Whiteman: If I was to buy one today, it would probably be Spotify, but I don't know if I really want to jump into any of these three.

Travis Hoium: I agree. It's the one that I own. It's the one where I can actually wrap my head around the valuation, and it's not as cyclical. It's more that I am not really interested in buying Palantir or Caterpillar today.

Lou Whiteman: Just so we're not boring, if it's a long enough time horizon, I'll take CAT. 

Tyler Crowe: We've got them on record, everyone, so you can lambast them in emails and comments later, and we'll figure that out from there.

As always, people on the program may have interest in the stocks they talk about, and The Motley Fool may have formal recommendations for or against, so don't buy or sell stocks based solely on what you hear. All personal finance content follows Motley Fool editorial standards, and it's not approved by advertisers. Advertisements are sponsored content and provided for informational purposes only. To see our full advertising disclosure, please check out our show notes. Thanks for producer Dan Boyd and the rest of The Motley Fool team for Lou, Travis, and myself, thanks for listening, and we'll chat again soon.

Marvell Shares Gap Down: Is AI Sentiment Changing?Insight Enterprises NASDAQ: NSIT is targeting growth in artificial intelligence infrastructure and AI services while seeking to improve operating efficiency under its newly introduced three-year “One Insight” plan, CEO Jack Azagury said during a discussion hosted by Canaccord.

Azagury, who joined the company about four months ago after a 30-year career at Accenture, described Insight’s evolution from a value-added reseller into a solution integrator that helps customers with hardware, software, cloud technology and related services.

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The company’s strategy is built around three priorities: expanding in AI infrastructure and AI services, reducing operating expenses as a share of gross profit, and competing for and developing AI talent.

AI Infrastructure and Services Drive Growth Plan Azagury said Insight sees long-term demand for infrastructure, including servers, storage and networking, as customers modernize data centers and build hybrid cloud and on-premises environments. The company reported strong infrastructure performance in the second quarter, with server growth described as “through the roof,” alongside growth in storage and networking.

Insight also plans to expand AI-related services across engineering, data, cloud and security. Azagury said the company is investing organically in talent to deepen its capabilities in those areas.

While device unit volumes are expected to decline in the second half, Insight expects continued upward pressure on average selling prices as original equipment manufacturers signal further price increases. Azagury said server prices have risen substantially, with memory costs representing the largest driver.

“We do not see any abatement to the growth in infrastructure,” Azagury said, pointing to customers’ interest in maintaining both cloud and on-premises computing capabilities.

The company’s cloud business generated 39% gross profit growth in the second quarter, according to Azagury. He identified Microsoft and Google as major partners and said cloud remains a continuing growth area alongside customers’ interest in hybrid technology deployments.

Mid-Market AI Adoption Remains Early Azagury said many mid-market companies remain in the early stages of translating AI deployments into material financial results. He characterized adoption in that segment as being “probably in the second inning,” with many businesses still using AI for targeted applications rather than redesigning end-to-end processes.

He said companies need to focus on people and processes as well as technology in order to capture AI benefits. Insight is helping clients assess AI governance, business cases, token consumption and security permissions for AI agents, he said.

“At some point, you have to look at the economic and say, ‘I’m going to give you $100 on AI. I want this many benefits,’” Azagury said. “That rigor is not widespread yet.”

CFO James Morgado cited Insight’s own accounts-payable transformation as an example. The company has deployed agents across invoice processing, vendor communications and inbound calls, and Morgado said Insight expects more than 90% of that end-to-end process to be handled by agents over the next 12 months.

Operating-Leverage Opportunity Insight is also working to reduce operating expenses as a percentage of gross profit. Morgado said the company’s operating expense leverage stood at 67% in the first half, compared with a range of high-50% to low-60% for many peers.

Management identified opportunities in integrating acquisitions, consolidating middle- and back-office operations, reviewing procurement, reducing organizational layers and deploying AI internally. Morgado said Insight’s operations in Manila and the Philippines provide cost-arbitrage opportunities that the company intends to continue leveraging.

Azagury said Insight has paused mergers and acquisitions this year as it focuses on organic improvements and integration of acquisitions completed over the past two to three years, particularly in AI. The company is also buying back $299 million of stock, representing just under 10% of the company, according to Azagury.

Services Execution and Cash Flow Outlook In core services, Azagury said organic revenue growth improved from the fourth quarter through the first and second quarters, though he said more progress is needed. The company is integrating acquired capabilities, productizing offerings and equipping account executives to sell Insight’s full portfolio of solutions.

For example, Insight relaunched and packaged its security offerings under Insight Managed Exposure Defense, or IMED. Azagury said the productized approach, including faster quotes and standardized statements of work, has increased the company’s pipeline.

Morgado reiterated Insight’s full-year cash-flow target of $300 million to $400 million. He said cash generation is typically weighted to the second half, particularly as the second quarter tends to use cash in the company’s Microsoft-related business. Insight was in a better cash-flow position at midyear than it was at the same point last year, he said.

Looking ahead, Azagury said Insight intends to gain market share across its business, with cloud, core services and AI infrastructure expected to be its principal growth vectors. The company will provide further details on its operating model and three-year plan at an investor day expected toward the end of the year or early next year.

About Insight Enterprises (NASDAQ:NSIT)Insight Enterprises, Inc is a global technology provider headquartered in Tempe, Arizona. Founded in 1988, the company specializes in helping organizations harness the power of digital transformation by offering a comprehensive portfolio of IT hardware, software, cloud and licensing management solutions. Insight's expertise spans across the full technology lifecycle, from initial strategy and consulting to implementation, integration and ongoing managed services.

At the core of Insight's business are its consulting and professional services, which guide clients through complex technology environments and ensure optimal deployment of solutions.

This instant news alert was generated by narrative science technology and financial data from MarketBeat in order to provide readers with the fastest reporting and unbiased coverage. Please send any questions or comments about this story to [email protected].

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Nvidia and OpenAI logos are seen in this illustration taken, September 22, 2025. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo Purchase Licensing Rights, opens new tab

CompaniesAug 15 (Reuters) - Nvidia (NVDA.O), opens new tab is in talks to invest as much as $3 ​billion in SB Energy, a SoftBank Group (9984.T), opens new tab subsidiary developing ‌a massive planned Ohio data center project for OpenAI, the Information reported on Saturday, citing people familiar with the discussions.

Here ​are some details:

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The proposed investment is part of Nvidia's talks with OpenAI ​and SB Energy on providing around $100 billion in ⁠credit support for the planned Ohio data center campus, ​the report said.

Nvidia has discussed investing half of the $3 billion ​when the Ohio project deal is signed and the other half as part of SB Energy's planned initial public offering, according to ​the Information.

Reuters could not immediately verify the report. Nvidia ​and SB Energy did not immediately respond to requests for comment ‌outside ⁠regular business hours.

SB Energy is aiming to go public as soon as next month and could raise at least $5 billion in the IPO, the report added.

SB Energy, ​which is also ​backed by ⁠OpenAI, develops large-scale power and data center infrastructure projects. Founded in 2019, the company ​is building several data center campuses to ​support rising ⁠demand tied to AI workloads.

The Wall Street Journal on Friday reported that Nvidia has revised its plans to support a ⁠proposed ​OpenAI data center project in ​Ohio and is now expected to initially guarantee less than $120 billion, down ​from the $250 billion previously discussed.

Reporting by Disha Mishra in Bengaluru

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