Track market-moving stories before they get noisy

Key Takeaways Boot Barn is using stores, exclusive brands and digital growth to support a balanced expansion model.Fiscal 2026 comps rose 7.2%, with retail stores up 6.2% and e-commerce sales increasing 15.3%.BOOT plans 70 store openings in fiscal 2027, supporting expected sales growth of 14-16%. Boot Barn Holdings, Inc. (BOOT - Free Report) is leaning on a balanced growth model that combines store expansion, category depth, exclusive brands and digital execution.

For investors, the question is whether those strengths can keep driving sales while near-term margin pressure from occupancy, freight and expansion costs remains part of the story.

Boot Barn Demand Drivers Still Look BroadBoot Barn’s demand base is not tied to a single trend. The company serves western lifestyle and workwear customers across footwear, apparel, hats, accessories and related categories, giving it a broader retail position than a narrow fashion concept.

Fiscal 2026 same-store sales increased 7.2%, with retail stores up 6.2% and e-commerce up 15.3%. Fourth-quarter comps rose 6.1%, helped by higher transaction count and average unit retail, with strength across men’s western boots, ladies’ western boots, apparel and denim.

The durability signal is also meaningful. Many of Boot Barn’s top-selling styles have been in the assortment for more than five years, which lowers fashion-cycle risk and supports a steadier core merchandise base.

For comparison, Tractor Supply Company (TSCO - Free Report) gives investors another rural and work-related retail reference point. Deckers Outdoor Corporation (DECK - Free Report) is a relevant footwear and lifestyle-brand peer when assessing how branded product identity can shape consumer demand.

BOOT Store Expansion Is Still the Main EngineStores remain central to Boot Barn’s long-term thesis. The company ended fiscal 2026 with 539 stores across 49 states, while management believes the United States can support about 1,200 locations over time.

New-store economics remain attractive. Boot Barn targets roughly $3.2 million in first-year sales on about $1.7 million of total net investment, with a payback period of about 1.8 years.

The store base has already reshaped the company. Boot Barn opened 267 stores over the past five years, effectively doubling its chain, and those locations contributed more than $750 million of fiscal 2026 revenues.

The company opened 80 stores in fiscal 2026 and plans 70 openings in fiscal 2027. That expansion is expected to help support fiscal 2027 sales growth of 14-16%.

Boot Barn Brands Add Margin and IdentityExclusive brands are becoming a larger part of the Boot Barn model. Their penetration rose 220 basis points in fiscal 2026 to 40.8% of sales.

That shift matters because in-house labels do more than broaden product choice. Brands such as Cody James, Shyanne, Hawx and Cleo + Wolf help Boot Barn address specific customer needs while differentiating its assortment from retailers that rely more heavily on third-party labels.

Exclusive brands also support the margin story. Merchandise margin expanded 80 basis points in fiscal 2026, helped by buying scale, supply-chain efficiencies and higher exclusive brand penetration.

Management expects exclusive brand penetration to reach 41.3% in fiscal 2027 and continues to target 50% over time. That provides a longer-term path to product differentiation and profitability support.

Image Source: Zacks Investment Research

BOOT Digital Strategy Expands ReachBoot Barn’s digital strategy is designed to reinforce the physical fleet, not replace it. Stores still generated about 90% of fiscal 2026 sales, while e-commerce represented about 10%.

Website visits exceeded 164 million in fiscal 2026, up from more than 114 million in fiscal 2025. In the fourth quarter, e-commerce same-store sales increased 14.1%, faster than the retail store comp gain.

Omnichannel services add convenience across channels. Boot Barn supports buy online, pick up in store, curbside pickup, ship-from-store and in-store returns, tying digital traffic back to the store base.

The company is also investing in dedicated brand sites and artificial intelligence tools, including Range Finder and a piloted in-store consumer AI solution. Fiscal 2027 guidance calls for e-commerce same-store sales growth of 11-13%.

Boot Barn Signals Point to Growth With CautionThe bottom line is that Boot Barn still has several credible growth levers, led by stores, resilient categories, exclusive brands and digital reach. The caution is that faster expansion is also adding near-term cost pressure.

Gross margin declined 80 basis points in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2026. For the first quarter of fiscal 2027, management expects gross margin of 37.1-37.3%, down from 39.1% a year earlier, reflecting freight and occupancy headwinds.

BOOT currently carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). That rank suggests a more balanced near-term setup rather than a clear positive or negative earnings-revision signal. You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

The stock also has a VGM Score of A, with a Growth Score of A and Momentum Score of A, but a Value Score of C. That mix supports the view that operating momentum remains visible, while investors should stay alert to valuation and margin pressure.

Robinhood’s week-old Earn product has a clear favorite, and it’s not even close. Ethena’s USDe synthetic dollar has emerged as the dominant collateral asset in the lending vault powering Robinhood’s new yield offering, with users overwhelmingly routing their deposits through the protocol.

The Earn product, which launched July 1 alongside Robinhood Chain itself, lets users lend USDG, a stablecoin issued by Robinhood, into a Morpho-powered vault curated by Steakhouse Financial. The estimated return: 7% APY from borrower interest.

How the vault actually works Users deposit USDG into the vault, which then lends those funds to borrowers who post collateral. That collateral comes from three sources: Ethena’s USDe, Spark’s spUSDG, and Maple’s SyrupUSDG.

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As of July 8, Ethena accounts for approximately $100 million of the stablecoin supply on Robinhood Chain. The total supply has surpassed $200 million, meaning Ethena represents roughly 50% of all stablecoins circulating on the chain. That’s a commanding position for a protocol that only listed its ENA governance token on Robinhood back in November 2025.

Insurance coverage for the vault has been arranged through Lloyd’s of London and RELM, covering risks associated with smart contracts and cyber threats.

Why Ethena keeps winning distribution battles USDe works differently from traditional stablecoins like USDC or USDT. Rather than holding dollar reserves in bank accounts, Ethena maintains its peg through a delta-neutral hedging strategy, essentially holding crypto assets while shorting equivalent positions in perpetual futures. The yield comes from funding rates that perpetual futures traders pay.

What this means for investors Robinhood had roughly 24 million funded accounts the last time it reported figures. For ENA token holders, more USDe demand generally means more protocol revenue. The token has been trading on Robinhood since November 2025, giving retail users a direct way to express a thesis on the protocol’s growth.

Ethena’s roughly 50% share of on-chain stablecoin supply suggests users and capital allocators are expressing a strong preference over the two other collateral providers, Spark and Maple. The exact asset allocation percentages among the collateral providers have not been disclosed.

The product is progressively rolling out to U.S. users. Smart contract vulnerabilities, funding rate compression, and regulatory scrutiny of yield products remain live concerns.

Disclosure: This article was edited by Editorial Team. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.

July 9 (Reuters) - India's Apollo Micro Systems (APLL.NS), opens new tab will acquire a 41.33% stake in defence ​equipment maker Premier Explosives (PRMR.NS), opens new tab for 15.5 ‌billion rupees ($162.50 million), the companies said on Thursday.

Here are the details:

Get the latest news from India and how it matters to the world with the Reuters India File newsletter. Sign up here.

Per India's takeover regulations, ​Apollo Micro Systems will also offer ​to buy up to an additional ⁠26% stake in Premier Explosives from ​public shareholders at 698 rupees per ​share.

Consolidations have risen in India's fast-growing defence manufacturing sector, which has benefited from increased government spending ​and a push for local production.

The ​deal, expected to complete within five months, is ‌subject ⁠to regulatory approvals, including clearance from the Competition Commission of India.

Premier Explosives, which manufactures high-energy materials, rocket motors, countermeasures ​and munitions ​for the ⁠defence and aerospace sectors, will continue to operate under its ​existing brand after the acquisition.

Apollo ​Micro ⁠said the acquisition combines the companies' defence systems and energetic materials capabilities, helping ⁠expand ​their participation in defence ​and space programmes.

($1 = 95.3875 Indian rupees)

Reporting by Surbhi ​Misra in Bengaluru; Editing by Shinjini Ganguli

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles., opens new tab

It has been about a month since the last earnings report for Casey's General Stores (CASY - Free Report) . Shares have lost about 7.9% in that time frame, underperforming the S&P 500.

Will the recent negative trend continue leading up to its next earnings release, or is Casey's due for a breakout? Before we dive into how investors and analysts have reacted as of late, let's take a quick look at the latest earnings report in order to get a better handle on the important drivers.

CASY Q4 Earnings Beat on Inside Sales & Fuel Margin StrengthCasey's reported fourth-quarter fiscal 2026 results, with both the top and bottom lines beating the Zacks Consensus Estimate and increased year over year.

The company posted quarterly earnings of $4.37 per share, beating the consensus mark of $3.36 by 30.1%. Earnings rose 66.2% from $2.63 in the prior-year quarter. Revenues of $4.57 billion surpassed the consensus estimate of $4.40 billion by 4% and advanced 14.5% year over year. Inside same-store sales rose year over year, while fuel margins expanded sharply.

CASY’s Quarterly Performance: Key DetailsCasey’s delivered net income of $162.7 million in the fourth quarter, up 65.5% from $98.3 million in the year-ago period. EBITDA increased 33.2% year over year to $350.3 million, driven by higher inside and fuel gross profit.

The company benefited from strength inside the store and at the pump. Total inside sales rose 7.4% from the prior year to $1.52 billion, while total inside gross profit increased 10.5% to $643.4 million.

Casey’s Inside Sales Show Broad MomentumInside same-store sales increased 5.5% compared with 1.7% growth in the prior-year quarter. On a two-year stack basis, inside same-store sales increased 7.4%.

The upside was led by strong demand for whole pizzas, appetizers and sides in the prepared food and dispensed beverage category. Non-alcoholic beverages supported growth in grocery and general merchandise.

CASY’s Margin Profile StrengthensInside margin expanded to 42.4% from 41.2% in the year-ago quarter. Cost of goods management, improved waste and mix shift were the primary drivers of the 120-basis-point margin expansion.

Prepared food and dispensed beverage margin improved to 59.5% from 57.8%. Grocery and general merchandise margin increased to 35.7% from 34.8%, aided by favorable category mix and cost discipline.

Casey’s Segmental Sales TrendsPrepared food and dispensed beverage sales increased 9.2% year over year to $427.6 million. Same-store sales for the category advanced 6.6%, supported by whole pizzas, appetizers and sides.

Grocery and general merchandise sales rose 6.7% to $1.09 billion. Same-store sales in the category increased 5.1%, with notable strength in non-alcoholic beverages, particularly energy drinks.

CASY’s Fuel Business Delivers Strong GainsFuel gallons sold increased 3.6% year over year to 848.3 million, driven by a large store base and same-store gallon growth. Same-store fuel gallons were up 1.5% compared with 0.1% growth in the prior-year quarter.

Fuel gross profit jumped 29.1% to $397.4 million. Fuel margin improved to 46.9 cents per gallon from 37.6 cents a year earlier. Casey’s also generated $15.2 million in renewable fuel credits in the quarter, up $10.8 million from the prior-year period.

Casey’s Expense Trends and Cash PositionTotal operating expenses rose 10.1% year over year to $730 million. Operating 40 more stores accounted for roughly 2% of the increase, while same-store employee expense contributed about 1.5%, mainly due to higher labor rates.

The company ended the quarter with $1.4 billion in available liquidity, including $523 million in cash and cash equivalents and $900 million in available borrowing capacity. Casey’s repurchased about $63 million of shares during the quarter and its board expanded the repurchase authorization to $1 billion.

CASY’s Fiscal 2026 Finish & 2027 ViewFor fiscal 2026, Casey’s reported diluted earnings of $19.16 per share, up 30.9% year over year. Net income increased 30.7% to $714.4 million, while EBITDA rose 23.6% to nearly $1.5 billion.

For fiscal 2027, management expects inside same-store sales to increase 2-5%, with an inside margin above 42%. Same-store fuel gallons sold are expected to range between a 1% decline and a 1% increase. Total operating expenses are projected to rise 5-7%, while EBITDA is expected to grow 8-10%.

Casey’s Store Growth & Shareholder ReturnsCasey’s operated 2,944 stores as of Apr. 30, 2026. During fiscal 2026, the company added 40 new stores through construction, acquired 40 stores and opened one prior acquisition, while closing 41 stores.

The company expects to open at least 120 stores in fiscal 2027 through a mix of mergers and acquisitions and new store construction. Casey’s also raised its quarterly dividend by 14% to 65 cents per share, marking the 27th consecutive annual dividend increase.

How Have Estimates Been Moving Since Then?In the past month, investors have witnessed a upward trend in fresh estimates.

VGM ScoresAt this time, Casey's has a strong Growth Score of A, though it is lagging a lot on the Momentum Score front with a D. Following the exact same course, the stock has a score of D on the value side, putting it in the bottom 40% for this investment strategy.

Overall, the stock has an aggregate VGM Score of C. If you aren't focused on one strategy, this score is the one you should be interested in.

OutlookEstimates have been trending upward for the stock, and the magnitude of these revisions looks promising. Notably, Casey's has a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). We expect an in-line return from the stock in the next few months.

Changpeng “CZ” Zhao, the man who built the world’s largest crypto exchange and then went to prison for its compliance failures, has some thoughts about Hyperliquid. Speaking on the Galaxy Brains podcast on June 10, CZ called Hyperliquid’s high-performance Layer-1 blockchain and no-KYC perpetual futures trading model “awesome.” In the same breath, he made it clear he would never touch that approach himself. “I would never do what they do,” he said, pointing to the very personal consequences he faced when Binance’s own compliance infrastructure fell short.

Binance was hit with a $4.3 billion fine in 2023 for KYC and anti-money laundering violations. CZ personally served a four-month prison sentence as part of the settlement. He acknowledged that Binance, as a centralized exchange with identifiable leadership and corporate structure, simply cannot operate the way Hyperliquid does. Hyperliquid, by contrast, positions itself as a decentralized protocol, which at least theoretically puts it in a different regulatory category.

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Inside Hyperliquid’s model Hyperliquid launched its Layer-1 blockchain in 2023 and has since grown into one of the most active decentralized trading venues in crypto. Users connect their wallets and start trading perpetual futures instantly. No identity verification, no waiting period, no compliance friction. By 2025, it was handling hundreds of billions monthly in transaction volume.

Hyperliquid’s decentralization claims deserve some scrutiny. The network runs on just 24 validators. The Hyper Foundation controls approximately 60% of the governance stake. CZ himself pointed to this dynamic, noting that Hyperliquid is controlled by a small team. If regulators ever decide to come after the platform, that concentrated control structure could make it easier to identify responsible parties than a truly distributed protocol would.

HYPE token rides the wave The HYPE token, native to the Hyperliquid ecosystem, is trading near its all-time high around $76 to $77, with a market capitalization exceeding $15 billion. CZ’s remarks appear to have contributed to renewed enthusiasm around the token. The price surge came without any immediate regulatory repercussions.

What this means for investors The investment case for HYPE comes down to a single bet: can a no-KYC trading platform continue operating at scale without facing the kind of enforcement action that nearly destroyed Binance? Hyperliquid’s concentrated governance structure, with 24 validators and a foundation controlling roughly 60% of stake, means there are identifiable entities that regulators could target. A protocol where a single foundation holds supermajority governance power is, functionally, more like a company than a truly decentralized network, meaning decision-making could change rapidly and tokenomics could be altered based on the preferences of a small group.

Investors should watch for two signals above all else. First, any regulatory action or formal investigation targeting Hyperliquid or similar no-KYC platforms, particularly from US authorities, would immediately reprice the risk. Second, any moves by the Hyper Foundation to distribute governance stake more broadly would strengthen the decentralization argument and potentially reduce regulatory exposure.

Disclosure: This article was edited by Editorial Team. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.

Phantom Technologies and the Hyperliquid Policy Center filed a joint comment with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission asking the agency to update its rules for onchain market infrastructure.

The comment responds to the CFTC’s request for information on regulations that may limit fintech firms from partnering with financial infrastructure and intermediaries regulated by the Commission.

Phantom and HPC said current rules generally assume a custodial market structure where intermediaries handle customer orders and funds, while onchain markets can allow users to trade directly and retain control of their assets.

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The groups asked the CFTC to confirm that developing or contributing to onchain protocol software does not, by itself, trigger registration with the Commission. They said registration should apply to firms that actually handle customer orders or funds, or enter into transactions with customers, rather than to software protocols or developers standing alone.

Phantom and HPC also asked the CFTC to give registered exchanges, clearing organizations and intermediaries a path to use onchain infrastructure for regulated functions.

The comment said designated contract markets should be able to use onchain protocols for matching and execution, while derivatives clearing organizations should be able to use them for margining, settlement, clearing and default management.

The filing also calls on the CFTC to turn its recent Phantom no action letter into a formal rule. That letter granted relief to Phantom as a non custodial wallet provider whose role is limited to providing technical access to regulated markets. Phantom and HPC said a rulemaking would give similar wallet and front end providers broader certainty.

Phantom said it does not hold user funds, control private keys, execute trades between users or intermediate transactions. HPC described itself as an advocacy group focused on creating a regulated path for Americans to access onchain markets, including those available on Hyperliquid.

Phantom integrates Hyperliquid through its interface, though the functionality is not available to US users. The groups said they are working together to support regulations that would allow Americans to access onchain derivatives markets under CFTC oversight.

Disclosure: This article was edited by Estefano Gomez. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.

© Vladi333 / Shutterstock.com

Our AST SpaceMobile (NASDAQ:ASTS) 24/7 Wall St. price target is $91.65 over the next 12 months, implying 13.66% upside from the current price of $80.64. Our recommendation is buy with moderate confidence (0.5).

The 10-bagger question is fair given ASTS has already returned 542.04% over five years, but our base case does not see a near-term 10x. The path there requires flawless satellite deployment and MNO contract conversion over a multi-year window.

24/7 Wall St. Price Target Summary Metric Value Current Price $80.64 24/7 Wall St. Price Target $91.65 Upside 13.66% Recommendation BUY Confidence Level 50% A Volatile Path Into July, With Real Catalysts Underneath ASTS is down 7.06% over the past week and 13.85% over the past month, yet still up 76.84% over one year and 11.03% year to date. The stock sits 39% from its 52-week high of $133.86, well off the $36.08 low.

Q1 2026 revenue of $14.73 million missed the $36.58 million consensus, and EPS of -$0.66 came in well below the -$0.20 estimate, dragged by an $88.65 million induced conversion expense.

Underneath the noise, BlueBirds 8-10 are now operational in orbit per late-June updates, a Vodafone Spain direct-to-device agreement targets commercial availability by 2027, and Reddit chatter has cycled from a widely-shared “Down $240k in less than a month” loss post to renewed enthusiasm around a Rakuten contract. Cash and equivalents stood at $3.03 billion.

The Case for $108 and Beyond Bulls have a clean story. AST SpaceMobile has nearly 60 MNO partners covering 3 billion+ subscribers, over $1.20 billion in contracted partner commitments, and definitive agreements with Verizon and stc Group. Management is targeting 45 BlueBird satellites in orbit by year-end 2026 and FY2026 revenue of $150 million to $200 million.

CEO Abel Avellan called the setup a “fortress balance sheet” paired with the “industry’s largest global commercial ecosystem.” Our model’s bull case one-year price is $108.33, a 34.34% return, and the five-year bull case reaches $163.27.

Act now: the analyst who called NVIDIA in 2010 just named his top 10 AI stocks — and AST SpaceMobile didn't make the cut. Grab the names FREE today.

The Risks Worth Watching The bear case starts with dilution and losses. Q1 2026’s $191.01 million net loss included $55.35 million in stock-based comp, and insiders have been active sellers. The CFO sold 45,809 shares at roughly $93.81, while the President sold 25,904 shares at $126.64. CEO Avellan entered a variable prepaid forward on 2.5 million shares for roughly $146.7 million, with a floor of $59.58.

Analyst sentiment is mixed with 2 buys, 7 holds, and 2 strong sells. A bear-case one-year price of $69.05 is realistic if launches slip. Bulls would counter that heavy capex and non-cash conversion charges reflect a company scaling a global constellation.

Hold With a Buyer’s Bias Our 24/7 Wall St. price target of $91.65, a buy rating, and moderate 50% confidence reflect a stock priced for execution. The key factor tipping the scale is the growing revenue backlog against a still pre-commercial income statement.

The bull thesis strengthens if BlueBirds 11-13 launch cleanly and FY2026 revenue tracks toward the upper end of guidance. The setup weakens if satellite cadence slips or if further convertible issuance compounds dilution before commercial ramp.

Looking ahead, here is where our model projects ASTS could trade over the next 12 months, assuming current growth trajectories and satellite deployment milestones hold.

Year 24/7 Wall St. Price Target 2026 $91.65 This projection assumes ASTS executes its constellation buildout and converts MOU partners into recurring service revenue. Meaningful upside or downside could come from FCC decisions on spectrum, MNO churn, or a faster than expected European commercial launch.

Act now: the analyst who called NVIDIA in 2010 just named his top 10 AI stocks — and AST SpaceMobile didn't make the cut. Grab the names FREE today.

Contact [email protected] for any questions or corrections.

The platform whose homepage promises no presales and no team allocations is about to release roughly $130 million of presale and team tokens into a market that trades half that much in a day. The July 12 PUMP unlock, landing one year to the day after its record-breaking ICO, is the sharpest test yet of whether the fair-launch economy’s own house token can survive the mechanics it imposes on everyone else.

Summary

Pump.fun’s July 12 unlock releases 82.5 billion PUMP, worth roughly $130 million, into a thin daily trading market. The unlock tests the contradiction between Pump.fun’s fair-launch branding and its own allocated ICO and insider vesting schedule. PUMP’s buybacks and burns have been unusually aggressive, but they have not stopped the token’s steep drawdown. The key question is whether insiders and investors hold, hedge, or sell newly liquid tokens after the cliff. Saturday’s outcome will set a precedent for revenue-backed tokens facing large vesting overhangs. There is a sentence on Pump.fun’s homepage that reads like a manifesto: coins are instantly tradable on a transparent bonding curve, no liquidity to seed, no presales, no team allocations. It is the creed of the fair-launch economy the platform built, the promise that made it the center of Solana’s on-chain trading culture and, by Grayscale’s recent accounting, one of the three applications driving the entire network’s growth, with roughly 1.3 million monthly active users and daily revenue around $690,000.

On Saturday, July 12, the platform’s own token will supply the exception. An 82.5 billion PUMP cliff unlock, worth roughly $130 million depending on the day’s price, vests to precisely the categories the homepage disavows: about 50 billion tokens to the team and 32.5 billion to existing investors, together equal to 29.23% of the circulating supply. Recent daily trading volume in PUMP has run between $55 million and $70 million, meaning the unlock is roughly twice the size of everything the market currently trades in a day. And the calendar adds its own cruelty: the cliff expires one year to the day after the July 12, 2025 initial coin offering in which Pump.fun sold 150 billion tokens at $0.004, raising $600 million in twelve minutes, part of $1.32 billion in total token-sale proceeds. The token trades near $0.0015 today, down more than 60% from that ICO price and over 80% from its 2025 peak.

This piece treats the unlock as what it is: the clearest stress test yet staged of the fair-launch era’s central contradiction, a platform that industrialized instant, allocation-free token launches while financing itself through the largest allocated sale in memecoin history. It walks through the mechanics of Saturday’s cliff and why cliff unlocks are uniquely violent, the platform’s extraordinary and so far losing battle to defend its token with burned revenue, the bull and bear cases for absorption, the Ansem airdrop debate over what the platform owes its users, and what the outcome will signal for every token with a vesting schedule, which is to say nearly all of them.

The mechanics: what actually happens Saturday Token unlocks are scheduled supply events, and this one is a cliff, the harshest shape a vesting schedule can take. Rather than dripping tokens to insiders over months, a cliff holds everything back and releases a block at once; Saturday’s block is 82.5 billion tokens against a circulating base of roughly 400 billion, which is why the same event can be described as 29% of circulating supply and just under 10% of the eventual trillion-token total. Tokenomist’s vesting data attributes the tranche to existing investors and the team, with the investor slice worth about $48 million and the team slice about $74 million at recent prices.

What an unlock does to price is not mechanical dilution, a point unlock analysis gets wrong in both directions. The tokens exist already; what changes is that they become sellable, converting locked paper wealth into potential order flow. Whether they become actual order flow depends on the recipients, and that is unknowable in advance: investors from a $0.004 ICO remain underwater at $0.0015 and may prefer to wait; a team sitting on nine figures of newly liquid tokens may sell nothing, or hedge quietly through derivatives, or drip supply out over months. The market’s problem is that it must price the possibility before observing the behavior, which is why unlocks front-run themselves: the fear arrives on schedule even when the selling does not, the same anticipatory arithmetic that governs every large scheduled release in crypto, from Pi’s monthly drip to the industry-wide $776 million calendar this very week, where PUMP’s cliff is the largest single event.

The order-book context is what makes this cliff unusually sharp. Against $55-70 million of daily volume, $130 million of new sellable supply cannot exit through the market quickly without moving it violently; every large sale in a thin book pays an execution cost that compounds as depth runs out, which disciplines rational sellers into patience but also means any impatient seller inflicts disproportionate damage. Derivatives complete the picture: funding on PUMP perps has been mildly positive into the event, and the presence of liquid perp markets means insiders did not need to wait for Saturday to monetize; anyone sophisticated could have shorted against their locked position months ago, converting the cliff from a decision point into a settlement date. If a meaningful share of the tranche is already hedged, Saturday’s visible selling will understate what was economically sold long ago.

The business behind the token Judging the unlock requires separating two things the market constantly conflates: Pump.fun the business and PUMP the token, because the first is among crypto’s genuine success stories and the second has been among its disappointments, and the gap between them is where Saturday’s outcome will be decided.

The business case is not seriously contested. Pump.fun industrialized token creation, launching well over a million coins through a bonding-curve model that requires no code, no seeded liquidity, and no permission, then graduated the survivors to its own PumpSwap venue after cutting external exchanges out of the pipeline in 2025. Grayscale’s recent Solana research named it one of three applications powering the network’s on-chain economy, crediting roughly 1.3 million monthly active users and daily revenue near $690,000; the platform’s own recent prints run around $900,000 in daily fees. Cumulatively, the machine has generated revenue in the high hundreds of millions, a figure almost no crypto-native application outside the major exchanges and Hyperliquid can match. At one point this spring its revenue run rate surpassed Hyperliquid’s, a comparison that flattered both.

The token’s case has been harder from birth, because the token was never required for anything. PUMP launched as an explicitly optional asset, promotions, potential fee rebates, brand alignment, layered onto a protocol that works identically without it, and the market has priced that optionality with brutal literalism: a $600 million market capitalization against a business whose revenue would justify multiples of that under any conventional framework, because no mechanism compels the revenue and the token to meet. The buyback program is the attempted bridge, and the fee overhaul is the attempted engine upgrade, and the unlock is 82.5 billion new claims on a bridge still under construction. That is the actual bet Saturday prices: not whether Pump.fun is a good business, which is settled, but whether PUMP has become the instrument through which the business’s value travels, which is not.

The vesting structure sharpens the question. Of the trillion-token total supply, roughly 400 billion circulates today; behind Saturday’s 82.5 billion sit a further 330 billion locked tokens plus a 240 billion tranche whose disposition is listed simply as to-be-determined, which means the market must price not one cliff but a mountain range, with this weekend’s event as the first serious peak. Every argument about absorption therefore doubles as an argument about precedent: a market that gags on tranche one reprices every tranche behind it, and a market that swallows it cleanly compresses the discount on the whole schedule at once.

The buyback war: $600 million of defense, and a losing scoreboard What makes PUMP the perfect specimen for this test is that no token in crypto has been defended harder. Pump.fun is that rarity, a memecoin-economy business with enormous real revenue, and it has spent that revenue on its token with an aggression that makes traditional buyback programs look timid.The record: as of early January, the platform had spent $233 million buying back 62.2 billion PUMP. In April it went further, executing a $370 million burn that destroyed roughly 36% of the then-circulating supply in a single stroke, and committing half of all platform revenue to automated buybacks and burns for a year. Co-founder Alon Cohen framed the philosophy plainly: every dollar not burned is a dollar being put to work toward the same outcome. Measured as capital returned relative to market capitalization, this is among the most intense buyback regimes any asset has run, crypto or otherwise, the same revenue-recycling architecture that powered Hyperliquid’s token to its structural rally, applied at comparable intensity.

The scoreboard, though, reads differently. HYPE rode its buyback engine toward all-time highs; PUMP burned a third of its supply and remains more than 80% below its peak, with an earlier buyback phase visibly failing against sustained whale selling in late 2025. The divergence is the most instructive data point in the entire buyback debate, because it isolates the variable: Hyperliquid’s buybacks recycle fees from a business whose volumes grew relentlessly, while Pump.fun’s recycle fees from a business whose activity peaked with the memecoin mania and now runs at a fraction of it, roughly $775,000 of daily revenue against days that once cleared multiples of that. Buybacks amplify a trajectory; they do not reverse one. A platform buying its token with shrinking revenue is bailing with a bucket whose size is set by the leak.

That is the machine Saturday’s supply lands on. The bull case for absorption leans on it: half of revenue, roughly $400,000 a day at current run rates, is a standing bid of about $12 million a month, and the April burn proved the treasury will act discretionarily and at scale when it chooses. The bear case does the division: at current revenue, the automated program would need most of a year to absorb the unlock alone, before touching the further 330 billion tokens still locked behind it, and the demand-side evidence, an 80%-plus drawdown through the most aggressive supply destruction in the sector, suggests the bid that matters has been structurally absent since the ICO cohort was formed.

One comparison calibrates the buyback machine’s scale honestly. Publicly listed companies are considered aggressive when they return 5-10% of market capitalization to shareholders annually; Pump.fun’s April burn alone destroyed value equal to roughly 60% of the token’s current market capitalization, and the standing program adds double-digit annualized percentages on top. No equity on earth defends itself at that intensity, and the fact that the defense has coincided with an 80% drawdown is the strongest single piece of evidence in the bear case, not because the buybacks failed at their mechanical job, supply genuinely shrank, but because they revealed how large the other side of the ledger was: the ICO cohort’s exit demand, the airdrop-less community’s indifference, and a broader market repricing the entire launchpad category. Buybacks are a transfer to whoever is selling, and for a year, the sellers have accepted the transfer and kept selling.

Fair launch for thee: the contradiction at the center

The unlock’s symbolism deserves direct treatment, because it is not incidental to the price question; it is entangled with it.Pump.fun’s cultural product was always fairness-as-spectacle: anyone can launch, everyone enters on the same curve, insiders do not exist because there is nothing to be inside of. That proposition trained millions of traders and generated over a million token launches, and it made the platform’s own financing choice, a 33% ICO allocation plus team, investor, community, and ecosystem tranches on vesting schedules, read as a quiet exemption from the house rules. The July 2025 sale was legal, disclosed, and oversubscribed in minutes; it was also, structurally, everything the homepage says does not happen here. Saturday is the day the exemption becomes supply.

The community’s response has crystallized around a demand articulated most loudly by the trader Ansem: that the platform owes its users an airdrop, on the order of $250-300 million, before or alongside the insider unlock, both as restitution to the trenches that generated its revenue and as a demand-side event large enough to meet the supply-side one. The platform has so far chosen destruction over distribution, in Cohen’s framing, burning value for all holders rather than gifting it to some, and critics answer that burns reward the ICO cohort and insiders pro rata while airdrops would reward usage, and that a platform whose moat is community loyalty is choosing the shareholder-style tool precisely when the community-style one is needed. Ansem’s version is nakedly practical: a stimulus to the trenches, timed to a Solana resurgence, would flip sentiment at breakneck speed. Underneath the tactical debate sits the structural one, the same question every fee-generating protocol now faces about who protocol revenue actually belongs to, and Pump.fun’s answer on Saturday, burn, distribute, or hold, will be read as precedent across the launchpad economy.

There is also a fee-system subplot with real stakes: the platform is overhauling its creator economics for 2026, replacing the Dynamic Fees V1 model with market-driven pricing and Creator Fee Sharing that lets a coin’s fees flow to up to ten wallets, with transferable ownership and revocable update authority. It is a genuine product answer to the platform’s deepest criticism, that it monetized an economy in which almost everyone else lost money, and its adoption curve will decide whether the revenue feeding the buyback machine grows again or keeps shrinking. The unlock and the fee overhaul are the same story on two timescales: whether Pump.fun can convert extraction into an economy durable enough to value its token.

The recipients’ own incentive map deserves one more pass, because it is less one-sided than the fear suggests. The team’s 50 billion tokens belong to operators of a business that still prints near a million dollars a day, whose personal wealth is overwhelmingly in the platform’s future, not this tranche, and whose every sale will be watched on-chain by the most forensic community in crypto; dumping into their own unlock would be economically minor for them and reputationally expensive. The investors’ 32.5 billion is the truly unpredictable slice, funds with their own limited partners, their own marks, and, at prices 60% below the ICO, their own awkward conversations. The likeliest split, insiders slow, funds mixed, is precisely the ambiguity the market cannot price in advance and will read obsessively in wallet flows from Saturday onward.

How unlocks actually trade: the front-running problem The empirical literature on token unlocks, and by 2026 there is one, converges on a finding that reframes Saturday: unlock damage is mostly done in advance. Studies of large vesting events across hundreds of tokens find underperformance concentrating in the weeks before the date, as informed holders pre-position, market makers widen, and derivative shorts accumulate against the locked supply, with the event itself frequently marking a local low rather than starting a decline. The mechanism is simple: the date is public, the size is public, and markets do not wait for scheduled news. PUMP’s chart into this week is consistent with the pattern, chopping near all-time-low territory while the broader Solana complex rallied, and its perp funding staying mildly positive suggests the short side is already crowded, which is the configuration in which unlock days produce squeezes instead of collapses, the sell-the-rumor crowd covering into the fact.

The counter-pattern also exists, and honesty requires naming it: cliffs to insiders who genuinely need liquidity, teams meeting obligations, funds returning capital to their own investors, produce sustained post-unlock distribution that no amount of pre-positioning absorbs, visible as weeks of steady exchange inflows from vesting wallets. The 2025-26 unlock calendar is littered with both outcomes, and the differentiating variable, studied across events, is less the unlock’s size than the recipients’ situation: underwater venture positions in a dead market sell relentlessly; profitable insiders at a platform with ongoing revenue tend to drip or hold. PUMP’s recipients occupy an unusual cell in that matrix, underwater relative to the ICO on paper, attached to a business still printing near a million dollars a day, and publicly lobbied by their own community to convert the moment into a distribution event instead. There is no clean precedent for that combination, which is part of what makes Saturday informative.

One more structural note: the unlock lands into a week in which the entire market is digesting more than $776 million of scheduled releases across Aptos, RedStone, and others, the routine weekly weather of an industry whose 2021-24 financing choices are now permanent supply infrastructure. PUMP is the week’s largest single event and its most symbolically loaded, but it is not an anomaly; it is the fair-launch platform taking its turn in the same vesting queue as everyone it was supposed to be different from.

What Saturday will actually reveal Strip away the drama and the unlock resolves into observable outcomes with clean interpretations.The constructive scenario: elevated volume without a lasting price break, little visible flow from vesting wallets to exchanges, the automated buyback continuing through the event, and price reclaiming its pre-unlock level within days. That outcome would say the cliff was pre-hedged, pre-priced, or met by real demand, and it would be the strongest evidence yet that PUMP’s holder base has rotated from ICO exit-seekers to buyers of the fee stream. The destructive scenario: heavy volume with price deterioration that holds, exchange-bound transfers from recipient wallets, and funding flipping decisively negative, which would say the insiders wanted out, the book could not carry them, and the further 330 billion locked tokens behind this tranche should be priced as a standing overhang rather than a formality. And there is a third, likeliest scenario, the muddled one: a spike, a partial recovery, ambiguous wallet flows, and both camps declaring vindication, in which case the tell shifts to the following weeks, whether the buyback’s pace changes, whether the team communicates a lockup extension or distribution plan, and whether revenue, the ultimate arbiter, turns.

For the wider market, the reading is bigger than one token. PUMP is the house token of the venue that created more tokens than any mechanism in history, and its unlock is the fair-launch economy grading its own homework: whether a platform built on the premise that allocations are the original sin can carry an allocated token through its own cliff. A clean absorption validates the buyback-and-burn defense every revenue protocol is now copying. A failure hands the sector a precedent it will not enjoy, that even nine figures of burned revenue cannot outbid a vesting schedule, and sharpens the question hanging over the entire launchpad model in a market where scheduled supply meets scarce demand everywhere at once. Either way, July 12 stops being an anniversary and becomes a data point, and unusually for crypto, everyone agreed in advance what it would measure.

The wider Solana context adds a final layer of stakes. The unlock arrives just as the network’s fortunes have turned visibly upward, ecosystem activity leading the majors, tokenized-stock volumes and new consumer apps drawing institutional commentary, Grayscale spotlighting the chain’s application economy with Pump.fun as a named pillar. A clean absorption would let PUMP participate in a Solana narrative that is, for the first time in months, running without it; a failed one would hand the chain’s critics their counterexample, the flagship application economy unable to support its own flagship token. Platform and network are entangled in both directions, since Pump.fun’s fee machine is itself a meaningful share of Solana’s on-chain activity, and the trenches that Ansem wants airdropped are the same user base every Solana consumer app is competing to retain.

There is also a governance-shaped question waiting past Saturday that deserves a closing note: what a platform of this profitability eventually does with control. Pump.fun has so far kept every meaningful decision, fees, burns, the overhaul, distribution policy, in the founding team’s hands, with PUMP conferring no governance whatsoever, and that concentration is defensible in a young company and increasingly conspicuous in a cash-machine. Every path forward, a fee-sharing token model, a governance handover, continued benevolent centralization, has a live example elsewhere in crypto, and each reprices the token differently. The unlock will settle what the insiders’ tokens are worth this quarter; what the token is actually for remains the platform’s largest open design question, and the community pressure crystallizing around the airdrop demand suggests the answer will not stay deferred forever.

Saturday, then, carries more freight than one token’s chart: a referendum on buyback defenses, a test of the vesting economy’s worst-case shape, a Solana bellwether, and the fair-launch movement grading its own exception. Few scheduled events in this market cycle have been assigned so many meanings in advance, which is itself the final irony for a platform built on tokens that launch with no schedule at all.

Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice. Digital asset markets are volatile and you can lose your entire investment. Figures are current as of July 9, 2026, and may change. Always do your own research.

Michael Saylor’s company Strategy has launched an interactive credit model, enabling investors to assess the company’s debt resilience in real time. The announcement landed just two days after Strategy confirmed it had sold 3,588 BTC for $216 million to bolster dollar liquidity and cover preferred share payments. Formerly known as MicroStrategy, the company is widely recognized for holding significant amounts of Bitcoin on its balance sheet as part of its enterprise software and treasury operations.

Credit model introduced after Wall Street scrutinyThe new simulator comes as a direct response to renewed risk debates on Wall Street about Strategy’s business model. It is designed to provide analysts with tangible data on how long the company can sustain its debt obligations even if there’s no significant uptrend in Bitcoin’s value.

Strategy emphasizes that converting reserves to cash is not a desperate move but rather part of a broader capital structure it describes as the digital credit capital framework.

The model released by Strategy allows investors to see exactly under what circumstances the company can meet its dividend and coupon commitments, even if Bitcoin growth comes to a standstill.

Cash buffer for 30 years takes the spotlightThe underlying data in the simulator reveals the limits of Strategy’s current capital structure. Even in a scenario where Bitcoin’s value stagnates for decades, the company’s $52.87 billion in crypto reserves and $2.55 billion in USD reserves would allow all dividend payments to be honored for a full 30 years without interruption.

One particularly notable metric is the annual breakeven return. According to the BTC Breakeven ARR, Bitcoin does not have to stage a dramatic rally for Strategy to meet all its coupon and dividend payments without tapping new capital—an average annual increase of just 3.33% would keep the commitments solvent.

IndicatorDataBTC sold3,588 BTCSales proceeds$216 millionCrypto reserves$52.87 billionUSD reserves$2.55 billionPayment buffer30 yearsAnnual breakeven growth3.33%Debt commitments and new financial toolsStrategy is currently managing $6.714 billion in convertible bond debt and an additional $15.464 billion tied to preferred shares. These obligations bring its total debt load to $22.178 billion, while the company’s BTC Rating—a measure of assets to liabilities—stands at 2.7 times.

Michael Saylor’s long-standing approach centered on relentless Bitcoin accumulation. However, the arrival of the STRC debt instrument has altered this dynamic. As of July, the volume-weighted average market price of STRC shares fell below their par value of $100, prompting the company to increase the dividend rate to 12.00% in order to defend market prices.

The company acknowledged that higher dividend rates require consistent fiat cash inflow, so it has utilized up to $1.25 billion worth of BTC-to-cash conversion, as approved by its board of directors.

This shift signals a move away from passive holding towards a more flexible asset management strategy. Strategy’s new interactive model aims to limit the influence of traditional credit agencies and provide investors with a transparent, data-driven view of debt sustainability—even in a non-rallying crypto market environment.

Disclaimer: The information contained in this article does not constitute investment advice. Investors should be aware that cryptocurrencies carry high volatility and therefore risk, and should conduct their own research.

Updated July 9, 2026. The seven US spot XRP ETFs now hold roughly $1 billion in assets and about 970 million XRP after an eighth straight week of net inflows — even as the XRP token price has barely moved. Here is the latest on flows, AUM, and which funds are leading.

Key facts

Seven US spot XRP ETFs are trading; combined AUM sits near $1 billion (~$988M) with roughly 970.9 million XRP locked as of July 8, 2026. Cumulative net inflows have held near $1.4 billion since the November 2025 launch. The funds logged their eighth consecutive week of net inflows, including +$6.55 million on July 2 (after a small -$1.86M outflow on July 1). Leaders: Bitwise XRP ETF (1XRP) ~$245.3M AUM; Canary XRP ETF (2XRPC) ~$225.9M; Franklin XRP ETF (3XRPZ) ~$167.9M. Seven spot XRP ETFs now hold about $1 billion The US spot XRP ETF complex has grown to seven funds since the first products launched in November 2025, and their combined assets under management now sit near the $1 billion mark — about $988 million as of July 8, 2026, according to fund-flow trackers. Together the funds have pulled roughly 970.9 million XRP off the open market and into regulated custody, a figure that has kept climbing even through XRP’s price weakness.

That growth answers a question a lot of traders are still searching: yes, spot XRP ETFs are live and trading in the US, and the line-up has expanded from the original five funds to seven, with additional issuers filed. The wrappers give institutions a compliant way to hold XRP without managing keys or custody themselves — the same structural shift that reshaped Bitcoin and Ether demand a cycle earlier.

Eight straight weeks of net inflows The headline for flows is consistency. US spot XRP ETFs have now recorded their eighth consecutive week of net inflows, with a +$6.55 million day on July 2 following a minor -$1.86 million outflow on July 1. Cumulatively, the funds have absorbed close to $1.4 billion since launch, peaking above $1.5 billion earlier in the spring before settling into a steadier accumulation pace.

The pattern matters because it is spot demand, not leverage: an ETF creation removes real XRP from circulation into a custodial wrapper, so a sustained inflow streak shrinks the effective float regardless of short-term price action.

The divergence: institutions keep buying while the price stalls The most striking part of the story is the gap between flows and price. XRP ETFs have logged eight straight weeks of inflows and nearly a billion dollars in assets, yet the XRP token has stayed weak, drifting rather than rallying on the institutional bid. Analysts frame it as a coiled-spring setup — accumulation building under a flat price — but it is equally a caution: inflows alone have not been enough to move spot while the broader crypto market trades cautiously into the Federal Reserve’s July 28–29 meeting.

For a fuller view of the bull and bear scenarios behind the token itself, see our XRP price prediction.

Which XRP ETF is the biggest? Fund Ticker Approx. AUM Bitwise XRP ETF 1XRP ~$245.3M Canary XRP ETF 2XRPC ~$225.9M Franklin XRP ETF 3XRPZ ~$167.9M AUM figures as of early July 2026; the remaining funds make up the balance of the ~$1B complex. Source: XRP ETF flow trackers.

What to watch next Three things decide whether the flows finally translate into price. First, whether the inflow streak extends into a ninth and tenth week — the longer institutions accumulate through weakness, the more constrained the float becomes. Second, the July 28–29 FOMC meeting, the nearest macro catalyst for all of crypto. Third, seasonality: July has historically been XRP’s strongest month, with an average return near +10%, so a break in the current stall would fit the calendar. Watch the daily flow prints and the custody-token count — those are the leading indicators of demand between now and the next catalyst.

FAQ Are there spot XRP ETFs trading in the US in 2026?
Yes. Seven US spot XRP ETFs are live, up from the original five, holding roughly $1 billion in combined assets as of July 2026.

How much have XRP ETFs pulled in?
Cumulative net inflows are near $1.4 billion since the November 2025 launch, with an eighth consecutive week of net inflows through early July 2026.

How much XRP is locked in ETF custody?
About 970.9 million XRP across the seven funds as of July 8, 2026 — a figure that has kept rising even as the token price stayed weak.

Which XRP ETF is the largest?
The Bitwise XRP ETF (1XRP) leads with roughly $245 million in AUM, followed by Canary (2XRPC) and Franklin (3XRPZ).

Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial or investment advice. ETF AUM and flow figures are third-party estimates and change daily. Cryptocurrency investments carry risk, including the possible loss of principal. Always do your own research and consult a licensed adviser. Sources: XRP ETF flow trackers, U.Today, TradingNews (July 2026).

AI Agents Enter the Security LabThe @ethereumfndn security team has been running coordinated AI agents directly against Ethereum's core protocol code, and the experiment has produced tangible results. Among the confirmed findings was a flaw at the peer-to-peer (P2P) network layer, which has since been patched and publicly disclosed as a CVE. The Ethereum Foundation published a detailed account of the exercise on its blog on July 9, 2026.

The effort is part of a broader push to harden Ethereum's Layer 1 infrastructure ahead of a busy period of protocol upgrades. The Foundation has also been funding AI-powered protocol security research through its grants program, which aims to move tooling beyond basic static analysis into protocol specification auditing and active vulnerability detection.

The Signal-to-Noise ProblemThe more instructive finding, however, was not the bugs themselves. It was the volume of noise that surrounded them. The AI agents produced a large number of confident-sounding reports, and the majority turned out to be wrong, duplicated, or pointing to code paths that are unreachable in practice.

That dynamic is not unique to Ethereum. Across the broader security industry, AI-assisted discovery is driving a sharp rise in reported vulnerabilities, but the subset that genuinely requires action remains far smaller. The challenge has shifted from finding bugs to sorting them. Triage, validation, and response are now the bottlenecks, and human capacity for that work remains limited.

The lesson from the Ethereum Foundation's exercise reflects that reality. AI can scan a codebase at a scale no manual team could match, but the credibility of any finding still depends on an experienced human reviewer at the end of the pipeline. Getting that balance right will likely define how effective AI-assisted security becomes across the broader blockchain ecosystem.

Separately, the Foundation raised its maximum bug bounty from $250,000 to $1,000,000 for critical protocol vulnerabilities, with reports acknowledged within 48 hours and an initial assessment completed within one week. That expanded program signals how seriously the Foundation is treating protocol security as a strategic priority.

Sources:
Ethereum Foundation Blog: Triage Is the Product
Ethereum Foundation ESP: AI-Powered Protocol Security Research Grant
Ethereum Foundation Bug Bounty Raised to $1 Million

Zipper Goes Live on Stellar Mainnet@StellarOrg has activated the Protocol 27 upgrade, codenamed Zipper, on the Stellar mainnet. The mainnet upgrade vote took place on July 8, 2026, completing a rollout that included testnet deployment on June 18 and a series of SDK, RPC, and core releases stretching back to early June.

The upgrade centres on a single but consequential change: making authentication delegation a first-class feature on Stellar, meaning one account can officially authorise another to act on its behalf. Before Zipper, delegation existed on Stellar only as an accidental side effect. Developers who tried to use it faced a tangle of manual steps, extra simulation passes, and bloated transaction sizes, so most teams avoided it entirely. Zipper makes delegation a proper, first-class feature that is dramatically simpler to implement correctly.

What Changes for Developers and UsersCheaper transactions and more flexible account designs, including social recovery, delegated signing keys, and modular multisig, become practical to build. Transactions also become smaller and cheaper because all delegated signers bundle into a single authorisation entry instead of requiring separate ones.

The upgrade also closes a security gap in the Soroban smart contract environment. Signature payloads now explicitly bind to the top-level account address, preventing cross-account replay attacks. CAP-0071-02 adds address-bound Soroban credentials (V2), closing a narrow replay vulnerability.

Soroban developers building smart accounts, including wallets, multisig schemes, and account abstraction, will see the most direct benefit. Developers building applications where multiple accounts may share keys, or who want to adopt a more conservative security posture, should plan to migrate to SOROBAN_CREDENTIALS_ADDRESS_V2 after the Protocol 27 upgrade.

Protocol 27 also lays the groundwork for what comes next. The Stellar Development Foundation has confirmed that Protocol 28 will bring contract-based authentication to classic Stellar accounts, and the delegation mechanism in Zipper is a direct prerequisite for that. For $XLM and the broader Stellar ecosystem, Zipper is less a final destination and more the foundation for the next wave of smart account capabilities.

Sources
Stellar Development Foundation: Zipper Protocol 27 Upgrade Guide
CryptoWisser: Zipper Protocol 27 Is Now Live on Stellar Mainnet

A view shows the logo of Brazilian state-run oil firm Petrobras in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil June 5, 2025. REUTERS/Ricardo Moraes Purchase Licensing Rights, opens new tab

CompaniesLA PAZ, July 9 (Reuters) - Bolivia will launch technical talks next week with Brazil's state-run oil firm Petrobras (PETR3.SA), opens new tab on its possible return to exploration and production in the country, while the ​company is also willing to help restructure state energy firm YPFB, Energy Minister ‌Marcelo Blanco said on Thursday.

The government of President Rodrigo Paz is looking to reopen Bolivia to energy investment and revive trade with key partners such as Brazil after years of declining gas output helped drain hard-currency reserves ​and turn a former energy exporter into a country hit by recurring fuel shortages.

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"The goal ​is for them to produce again, to operate here in Bolivia, to ⁠explore, and to have a strategic partnership," Blanco told reporters, adding that Petrobras was open ​to supporting YPFB's restructuring with its past crisis-management experience.

Blanco said the two sides agreed after a ​meeting on Wednesday to set up technical working groups starting next week to evaluate Petrobras' renewed participation across the sector.

He did not provide investment figures or a timeline.

"I am not going to give figures. I will ​not be irresponsible. I never give amounts or exact dates," Blanco said, adding that Bolivia ​was also seeking to work with other investors interested in the country.

YPFB President Sebastian Daroca also said a ‌firm ⁠was expected to submit its final report next week on Bolivia's oil and gas reserves through the end of last year.

He said the government planned to use the figures to discuss how it could boost output in coming years.

The report is being closely watched by analysts and industry ​groups because Bolivia has ​faced longstanding criticism ⁠over delays in publishing updated reserve data, leaving uncertainty over the size of the country's remaining oil and gas resources.

Petrobras halted investments in Bolivia ​after former President Evo Morales nationalized the sector in 2006. Still, ​the Brazilian company ⁠has not been completely absent from Bolivian gas business, as it has been authorized to import Bolivian natural gas into Brazil through border entry points between the two countries.

In March, Paz said ⁠Bolivia wanted ​to restart its relationship with Petrobras under new and clearer ​energy regulations designed to lure foreign capital back to the country after more than a decade of declining gas output.

Reporting ​by Daniel Ramos; Writing by Michael Susin in Barcelona; Editing by Aida Pelaez-Fernandez and Kylie Madry

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Jul 9, 2026, 12:00 p.m.

2 min read

Summary

Mantle is migrating its $2.5 billion Super Portal from LayerZero to Chainlink's CCT standard to enhance security and control over token transfer settings.Migrations to Chainlink CCIP so far include Kelp and Lombard, both of which brought over $1 billion, as well as Solv Protocol, Virtuals, Re and Kraken’s tokenized assets.The Mantle migration will occur from July 9 to the 15, enabling the project to expand MNT token transfers to additional blockchain networks while securing assets via oracles.More than $7.2 billion in cross-chain and wrapped assets have migrated from LayerZero to Chainlink's Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol (CCIP) since May, with Mantle becoming the latest project to replace LayerZero for high-value token transfers.

Mantle said it is migrating its Super Portal, which it co-developed with Bybit, from LayerZero's Omnichain Fungible Token (OFT) standard to Chainlink's Cross-Chain Token (CCT) standard.

LayerZero and Chainlink CCIP both let token holders move assets between blockchains, a basic requirement as crypto markets spread across competing networks.

The infrastructure matters because bridges between different blockchains have become one of crypto’s largest security risks, with a single failure able to expose hundreds of millions of dollars in user assets.

The portal enables transfers of the MNT token between Ethereum and Solana, with support for additional blockchain networks planned.

The migration includes MNT, the native token of Mantle's network, which has more than $2.5 billion in value locked. Mantle's move pushes the total value of announced migrations from LayerZero to Chainlink CCIP above $7.24 billion.

The shift began after the $292 million Kelp bridge exploit earlier in the year, which increased scrutiny of LayerZero-powered bridge configurations. Kelp later announced it would migrate more than $1.5 billion in assets to Chainlink CCIP.

Since then, Solv Protocol migrated $700 million in tokenized bitcoin, Re moved $475 million, Kraken transferred $330 million in wrapped assets, Lombard migrated more than $1 billion, Virtuals Protocol moved $700 million and Yuzu Money transferred $54.5 million.

Mantle said its Super Portal will be suspended during the migration, which is scheduled to take place between July 9 and July 15. Existing MNT on Ethereum and Solana, along with MNT activity on Byreal and Bybit, will remain unaffected.

"As tokenized financial assets move from concept to scale, the infrastructure that carries them across chains cannot be an afterthought," Emily Bao, a key advisor at Mantle, said in a statement.

Under the new setup, Chainlink CCIP will secure MNT transfers using its decentralized oracle network. Mantle said the migration also gives it direct control over token pools and transfer settings under the CCT standard as it expands MNT to additional blockchain networks and tokenized asset markets.

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Stablecoin issuer Circle has come under scrutiny from US prosecutors over allegations that it has resisted court orders and law enforcement requests aimed at recovering crypto stolen through scams, according to officials in Wisconsin and New York.

The dispute centers on a Wisconsin fraud case in which Circle froze approximately 381,000 USDC but later declined to comply with a court order directing it to invalidate those tokens and issue replacements to law enforcement.

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Circle has denied wrongdoing, arguing it lacked the technical ability to carry out the order, that the complaint should be dismissed, and that prosecutors failed to pursue alternative solutions.

Law enforcement officials say the case underscores the growing challenge of combating crypto-enabled fraud, as funds can be transferred across blockchains before courts can intervene.

Prosecutors have also questioned Circle’s policy of freezing assets only through a formal legal process, while industry experts argue the company could implement technology similar to rival Tether’s system for burning and reissuing stolen tokens.

Disclosure: This article was edited by Editorial Team. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.

Key Takeaways CoreWeave sees rising AI demand driving record backlog and deeper customer commitments.CRWV topped 1 GW of active power and targets more than 1.7 GW by the end of 2026.CoreWeave added over 400 MW of contracted power, lifting total capacity above 3.5 GW. As organizations race to build and deploy increasingly sophisticated AI models, the need for massive computing power seems to compound. This growing demand has created an emerging opportunity for AI-focused cloud infrastructure providers, like CoreWeave, Inc. (CRWV - Free Report) .

Management highlighted four key themes –rising AI demand across hyperscalers and enterprises, a broader platform supporting training, inference, agentic AI workloads, rapid infrastructure expansion with more than 3.5 GW of contracted power and stronger financing that has secured more than $20 billion in debt and equity this year. AI workloads are shifting from training to inference and enterprise production, driving deeper commitments from existing customers while attracting new enterprise clients. This momentum fueled record backlog additions in the first quarter, including initial Vera Rubin deals alongside continued deployment of Blackwell, Hopper and Ampere capacity, with most of the new business expected to support its 2027 growth targets.

CoreWeave's aggressive infrastructure expansion is a key competitive advantage. It continues to strengthen its competitive edge by rapidly converting scarce AI infrastructure into revenue-generating AI cloud capacity. CRWV surpassed 1 GW of active power in the quarter and remains on track to exceed 1.7 gigawatts by the end of 2026. During the quarter, CoreWeave added more than 400 MW of contracted power, increasing its total to over 3.5 GW, with most of the capacity expected to come online by the end of 2027 through long-term lease agreements.

With strong customer demand, strategic global expansion, innovative AI services and partnerships with leading technology companies, CoreWeave appears well-positioned to capitalize on the AI infrastructure boom.

CRWV's AI Dominance Faces Fierce RivalsNebius Group N.V. (NBIS - Free Report) recently unveiled Nebius AI Cloud Aether 3.6, a wide range of enhancements focused on developer productivity, enterprise-grade security, governance and storage performance. The release also marks the debut of Nebius Echo, an AI-powered infrastructure assistant that represents NBIS’ vision for agentic cloud computing. To strengthen its position in the rapidly evolving AI cloud market, NBIS inked an agreement to acquire Eigen AI, in May. By integrating Eigen AI’s optimization stack into its Token Factory platform, NBIS aims to create a vertically integrated AI inference ecosystem that combines massive compute infrastructure, advanced model optimization and enterprise-ready deployment pipelines.

Microsoft (MSFT - Free Report) capitalizes on AI business momentum and Copilot adoption alongside Azure cloud infrastructure expansion. The Azure AI platform continues to benefit from demand across AI and non-AI services, with customer demand exceeding available capacity. It added another GW of capacity during the quarter and remains on track to double its overall data center footprint within two years. New data center investments were announced across four continents. In May, it signed new agreements with U.S. and U.K. government partners, the Center for AI Standards and Innovation and the AI Security Institute to advance AI testing and safety evaluation frameworks.

CRWV’s Price Performance and EstimatesShares of CoreWeave have gained 25.6% year to date against the Internet Software industry’s fall of 8.7%.

Image Source: Zacks Investment Research

In terms of Price/Book, CRWV’s shares are trading at 8.46X, higher than the Internet Software Services industry’s 4.67X.

Image Source: Zacks Investment Research

The Zacks Consensus Estimate for CRWV’s earnings for the current year has been revised downward over the past 60 days.

Image Source: Zacks Investment Research

CRWV currently carries a Zacks Rank #4 (Sell).

You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

Key Takeaways Seagate is benefiting from AI-driven storage demand, supporting higher revenue growth and margin expansion.STX is advancing HAMR with Mozaic drives, targeting higher-capacity enterprise HDDs through 2027.STX is boosting shareholder returns with debt reduction, dividends, buybacks and strong cash flow. The AI boom has reshaped the technology landscape, creating massive demand not only for GPUs and cloud infrastructure but also for data storage solutions. As enterprises generate and retain unprecedented amounts of AI training and inference data, storage has become a critical piece of the AI value chain.

Among the biggest beneficiaries of this trend has been Seagate Technology Holdings plc (STX - Free Report) , surging an impressive 505.6% over the past year. It has outpaced the Zacks Computer-Integrated Systems industry, the Zacks Computer & Technology sector and the S&P 500’s run of 218.8%, 34.4%, and 23.1%, respectively, in the same period.

Image Source: Zacks Investment Research

STX’s shares have exceeded its industry peers like International Business Machines Corporation (IBM - Free Report) , but lagged HDD behemoth and its direct competitor Western Digital Corporation (WDC - Free Report) and storage rival Micron Technology (MU - Free Report) . WDC, MU and IBM have gained 751.4%, 676.2% and 4.1%, respectively, during the same time frame.

STX remains one of the world's leading manufacturers of enterprise HDDs and has been aggressively developing next-generation high-capacity drives specifically designed for AI data centers. The company boasts a 52-week high of $1,145. Nonetheless, such an extraordinary rally naturally raises an important question for investors: Can Seagate continue climbing, or has the market already priced in most of the opportunity?

Accelerating AI Infrastructure Spending Fuels STX’s ExpansionAI is driving an explosion in data storage. As hyperscale cloud providers continue expanding AI infrastructure, they increasingly rely on a combination of SSDs for active workloads and HDDs for large-scale data storage. This industry trend plays directly into Seagate's strengths. Major cloud providers, including Microsoft, Amazon, Alphabet and Meta Platforms, continue investing tens of billions of dollars in AI infrastructure. As they expand AI data centers, demand for enterprise storage is rising, creating a strong long-term growth opportunity for Seagate.

Management highlighted that the company is entering a “new era of structural growth” driven by strong AI-led demand, rising adoption of Mozaic products and disciplined execution focused on expanding margins, cash flow and long-term value. While SSDs dominate high-speed applications, HDDs remain significantly more cost-effective for bulk storage—especially critical in hyperscale data centers supporting AI infrastructure. Seagate is well-positioned to capture this expanding opportunity through a technology strategy focused on increasing areal density rather than unit volumes, enabling a more capital- and manufacturing-efficient path to scale while improving cost and power efficiency per terabyte. This supports its target of mid-20% exabyte growth.

HAMR Technology Gives STX a Competitive EdgeInvestment in HAMR technology is STX’s key competitive advantage. Seagate’s focus on areal density and HAMR technology supports capacity growth and cost efficiency, with new product generations planned. Mozaic 4, second-generation HAMR, delivers up to 44TB per drive, 30% more capacity than the first generation. Mozaic 4 shipments began in late March and are expected to command 70% of HAMR shipments by the end of fiscal 2027. Mozaic 5 is in development, targeting 50TB capacity, with qualification shipments in late 2027. HAMR exabyte crossover is expected by the end of 2026. The focus is on increasing capacity per unit rather than unit volume, leveraging technology to improve aerial density.

Second-generation HAMR enables continued growth, with third-generation drives with 50TB capacity expected by the end of next year. Technology innovations include laser, photonic circuitry and media improvements, with minimal impact on the bill of materials. Seagate's strategy is built on durable storage demand, technology leadership and disciplined execution. Rising AI-driven data creation is boosting demand for cost- and energy-efficient, high-capacity HDDs, while its Mozaic platform and HAMR technology strengthen its competitive position. Backed by build-to-order contracts, pricing discipline and long-term supply agreements, Seagate is improving margin visibility and profitability.

Strong hyperscaler investment and sustained nearline storage demand have prompted the company to raise its annual revenue growth outlook to at least 20%, with capacity largely committed through 2027. Seagate's disciplined pricing strategy, supported by build-to-order contracts, provides greater revenue visibility and margin stability. Strong year-over-year and sequential price increases reflect robust demand, while most pricing for fiscal 2027 is already locked in with a significant portion of capacity allocated over the next four quarters. This approach is expected to support sequential revenue and profit growth throughout fiscal 2027, with management anticipating stable pricing trends rather than further acceleration.

Seagate's margins continue to outperform expectations, driven by strong demand, a favorable product mix and technology-led cost efficiencies. Incremental gross margins have exceeded the company's 50% target, supported by higher-capacity drives, improved yields and greater production efficiency. Management expects further margin expansion as Mozaic 5 and other technology advancements enhance cost and performance.

Strong Cash Returns Enhance the Investment CaseConsistent free cash flow generation strengthens Seagate's balance sheet and provides flexibility for future investments. Seagate also rewards shareholders through dividends. The company has maintained an attractive dividend policy while continuing to invest in product innovation. For income-focused investors, this provides an additional layer of return beyond potential share-price appreciation.

Seagate is using its strong cash flow to reduce debt while returning capital to shareholders through dividends and share repurchases. After retiring $641 million in debt last quarter, the company plans to reduce its remaining convertible notes further, expand buybacks and continue investing in growth, reinforcing its commitment to long-term shareholder value. It will maintain capital discipline while continuing the transition and ramp-up of HAMR technology, with fiscal 2026 capital spending expected to remain within its target range of 4–6% of revenue.

Image Source: Zacks Investment Research

However, investors should remain aware of several risks. The HDD industry remains cyclical, making shipments vulnerable to customer inventory corrections, slower enterprise spending and weaker PC demand. Declining SSD prices could also intensify competition, although HDDs continue to offer a significant cost advantage for exabyte-scale storage. Additionally, Seagate's reliance on large hyperscale cloud customers means changes in their purchasing schedules can lead to quarter-to-quarter revenue volatility.

Positive Estimate Revision Trend for STXSTX is currently witnessing an uptrend in estimate revisions. Earnings estimates for fiscal 2026 have inched up 0.3% to $14.93 over the past 60 days, while the same for fiscal 2027 has gone up 6.5% to $28.05.

Image Source: Zacks Investment Research

Valuation VulnerabilitiesGoing by the price/earnings ratio, the company’s shares currently trade at 30.54 forward earnings compared with 13.5 for the industry.

Image Source: Zacks Investment Research

In comparison, the forward 12-month price/earnings multiple for IBM, MU and WDC are 23.35X, 6.73X and 29.54X, respectively.

Is More Upside Ahead for STX Stock?Seagate's growth outlook is driven by several long-term catalysts, including sustained AI infrastructure spending, broader adoption of HAMR technology, increasing enterprise data storage needs and continued expansion of cloud data centers. Improving storage pricing, robust free cash flow and ongoing margin expansion could further boost earnings. Successful execution of its technology roadmap would strengthen Seagate's leadership in enterprise storage and support additional upside over the long term.

For investors who believe AI-driven data creation will continue accelerating over the next decade, Seagate remains an attractive way to gain exposure to one of the essential segments of the AI supply chain. While short-term pullbacks are always possible after such a strong run, the company's technological prowess, improving profitability and exposure to one of the fastest-growing technology trends suggest there could still be further upside over the long term.

Boasting a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy) currently, STX is a portfolio must-have. You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank stocks here.

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Uber CTO Praveen Neppalli Naga said that the company is rolling out AI agents across the company using "agentic pods." Big Event Media/Getty Images for HumanX Conference Uber has a new approach to using AI: "Agentic pods."

Praveen Neppalli Naga, the ride-hailing company's tech chief, said in an X post on Tuesday that Uber embedded 30 of its "most AI-proficient engineers" with teams across the company, including finance, legal, and human resources.

Over two weeks, the engineers worked with employees in those departments, observed their work, and created AI agents to help handle tasks, Naga said. Uber has run 16 such Agentic Pods over the past two months, he said.

Many of the duties that Uber's engineers developed agents for, such as financial pacing reports, involved accessing multiple systems and performing a lot of manual work. The engineers had to work directly with the people responsible for them to understand how to recreate them with AI.

"You can't automate them effectively by looking at process diagrams or documentation," Naga said in his post. "You have to understand how the work actually gets done."

The resulting agents are saving Uber time. Those financial pacing reports can now be made in 10 minutes, down from two days, Naga said. Allocating capital across 150 cities Uber operates in, a task that used to take 15 hours, now takes 30 minutes with AI agents.

Uber's experience with pods points to a role that's become a rare bright spot amid industry layoffs. Despite job cuts, tech companies are still hiring forward-deployed engineers, Business Insider reported in May. The job often involves an engineer from an AI company working with employees at a customer firm.

Whether those efficiencies are worth it is another question.

In May, Uber's chief operating officer, Andrew Macdonald, said on a podcast that it was getting harder for the company to justify spending as much as it has on AI.

Uber, like many tech companies, has ramped up spending on AI. Naga told The Information that Uber maxed out its Claude Code budget for the year this spring. All that spending hasn't led to a similar increase in "useful" consumer features, though, Macdonald said.

Uber plans to keep using the agentic pod model, Naga said in his X post.

"We're now forming a dedicated team to scale this further and go deeper," he said.

"They'll deeply understand the work, redesign it from the ground up, and use AI to fundamentally change how the business operates," he added.

Do you have a story to share about Uber? Contact this reporter at [email protected] or via encrypted messaging app Signal at 808-854-4501. Use a personal email address, a nonwork WiFi network, and a nonwork device; here's our guide to sharing information securely.

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Alex Bitter You're currently following this author! Want to unfollow? Unsubscribe via the link in your email.

Alex Bitter is a senior retail reporter covering the gig economy, food, and retail. His work focuses major gig delivery and ride-hailing apps, including Uber, Lyft, DoorDash, Instacart, and Walmart's Spark. He is interested in everything from what it's like to work on the apps to the companies' business strategies.Some of his recent stories feature gig workers who have been deactivated on the apps, DoorDash hiring traditional employees to make deliveries, gig workers' use of bots, and gig work expanding into new professions, such as nursing.Alex has also written about Aldi's US expansion, Starbucks' turnaround efforts, and the fallout from Kraft-Heinz's budget cutting. Convenience store chain Sheetz ended its "smile policy" after his reporting.Before joining Insider in September 2020, he wrote about consumer and retail companies for S&P Global Market Intelligence. He's a graduate of the University of Hawai'i at Mānoa and grew up on the Big Island.Alex lives in the Washington, DC, area, where you can find him studying ancient coins or searching for Civil War artifacts with his metal detector in his free time.Got a tip? Reach out at [email protected] or via encrypted messaging app Signal at +1 (808) 854-4501.

Uber AI Artifical Intelligence More Tech Artificial Intelligence

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Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN | AMZN Price Prediction) and Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) both filed earnings on April 29, 2026, framing two different bets on the AI buildout. Amazon leans on custom silicon and, per a $25 billion multi-tranche bond sale, to fund infrastructure. Microsoft leans on its OpenAI stake and contracted backlog. Same tailwind, different balance sheets.

AWS Reaccelerates While Azure Sprints Ahead Amazon posted EPS of $2.78 against a $1.653 estimate on revenue of $181.52 billion, up 16.61%. AWS grew $37.59 billion in revenue, growing 28%, the fastest pace in fifteen quarters, at a 37.7% operating margin. Ads cleared $70 billion trailing, a real second engine.

Microsoft delivered EPS of $4.27 versus $4.09 expected on $82.89 billion in revenue, up 18.3%. Azure grew 40% (39% constant currency), and the AI business hit $37 billion annual run rate, up 123%. Commercial remaining performance obligations reached $627 billion, nearly doubling year-over-year, contracted demand years out.

Business Driver Amazon Microsoft Cloud growth AWS +28% Azure +40% Q1 CapEx $44.2B $30.88B Operating margin 11.2% 45.6% Custom Silicon Vs. Contracted Compute Andy Jassy said Amazon’s chips business is at $20 billion run rate with triple-digit growth, with total Trainium commitments reaching over $225 billion, including up to 5 GW from Anthropic and 2 GW from OpenAI starting in 2027. Jassy expects Trainium to save “tens of billions of dollars of CapEx each year”.

Microsoft’s leverage is contractual. Satya Nadella framed the quarter around delivering “cloud and AI infrastructure and solutions” for the agentic era. Microsoft leans heavily on NVIDIA silicon and its OpenAI partnership, enormously profitable but leaving less optionality on chips than Amazon has built.

The Capex Bill Is About To Get Louder Amazon’s TTM free cash flow collapsed 95% to $1.2 billion, and long-term debt jumped to $119.1 billion from $65.6 billion. Polymarket traders assign 87.5% probability that 2026 capex tops $200 billion, with a coin-flip on $220 billion or more. Microsoft’s CapEx surged 84.39% year-over-year, and management stayed quiet on numeric guidance. I want to see whether AWS margins hold as this cash deploys.

Why I’m Leaning Toward Amazon Right Now Since the reports, AMZN is down 6.49% and MSFT is down 8.19%. Neither has been rewarded. Amazon’s ability to tap institutional debt cheaply, pair it with a chip stack customers are pre-buying in gigawatts, and still show 29.6% operating income growth on core business tilts the read. Microsoft is a fantastic compounder at 45.6% operating margin, and if you want quality and dividend support, that case is intact. But if custom silicon is the real moat of this cycle, Amazon looks like the fortress trade. I would change my view if AWS margin slips below the mid-30s while capex keeps climbing.

Act now: the analyst who called NVIDIA in 2010 just named his top 10 AI stocks — and Microsoft didn't make the cut. Grab the names FREE today.

Contact [email protected] for any questions or corrections.

Six gigawatts. That is the total AMD Instinct GPU capacity AMD (NASDAQ:AMD | AMD Price Prediction) will deploy for Meta under a partnership disclosed alongside its most recent earnings, with the first 1-gigawatt tranche powered by a custom MI450-based GPU. For scale reference, one gigawatt is roughly the output of a large nuclear reactor. Meta is committing to power-plant-scale AMD silicon, and it is doing so on top of a separate 6-gigawatt OpenAI agreement already on the books.

The total investment in compute for AMD has been rumored to be around $300 billion, though we’ll see what ultimately gets invested over time. Indeed, that’s the big question mark right now in financial markets.

What It Means Hyperscalers do not sign gigawatt-scale accelerator agreements as hedges. They sign them when they intend to build. That reframes AMD from a challenger chasing NVIDIA (NASDAQ:NVDA) into a co-supplier for the largest AI infrastructure buildouts in the world.

The financial fingerprints are already on the tape. Q1 FY2026 Data Center revenue reached $5.775 billion, up 57% year over year, making it the largest and fastest-growing of AMD’s four segments. Total Q1 revenue landed at $10.253 billion, up 37.9% year over year, beating the $9.91 billion consensus by 3.41%. Non-GAAP EPS came in at $1.37 versus $1.29 expected, driven by non-GAAP gross margins which expanded to 55% (up 170 basis points year over year).

Cash generation is scaling with the mix shift. Q1 free cash flow hit $2.566 billion, up 252.96% year over year, on operating cash flow of $2.955 billion. Net income more than doubled to $1.383 billion, up 95.06%.

Market Reaction AMD shares closed at $517.82 on July 2, 2026, down 4.26% on the day. That single-session dip is noise inside a much larger move. AMD is up 141.79% year to date from $214.16 at the end of 2025, and up 273.82% over the past year. For context, over the same twelve months, NVIDIA is up 24.06%.

Act now: the analyst who called NVIDIA in 2010 just named his top 10 AI stocks — and AMD didn't make the cut. Grab the names FREE today.

Bull Case The AMD bull case rests on a simple observation – the company’s customer roster now looks like NVIDIA’s. AWS, Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure, and Tencent are expanding 5th Gen EPYC-powered instances. Meta is the lead customer for 6th Gen EPYC (Venice and Verano). Oracle Cloud Infrastructure is standing up a 50,000-GPU AI supercluster using AMD Helios rack design in Q3 2026. Samsung is supplying HBM4 memory for the MI455X.

Guidance points to further acceleration. AMD guided Q2 FY2026 revenue to roughly $11.20 billion, implying about 46% year-over-year growth, with non-GAAP gross margin expanding to about 56%. On the Q1 call, CEO Lisa Su said, “Customer engagement around MI450 Series and Helios is strengthening, with leading customer forecasts exceeding our initial expectations and a growing pipeline of large-scale deployments providing us with increasing visibility into our growth trajectory.”

The pressure on rivals is visible in relative performance. Intel (NASDAQ:INTC) still carries a negative EPS of -$0.60 on a trailing basis, with quarterly earnings growth down 71.7% year over year. NVIDIA remains the incumbent, but AMD is winning nameplate capacity commitments rather than trial orders. Analyst posture reflects it: 41 buy or strong buy ratings against 10 holds and zero sells, with a consensus target of $508.31.

Bottom Line Six gigawatts from Meta and another six from OpenAI turn AMD’s AI narrative from optionality into contracted backlog. For long-term holders, the anchor to watch is Data Center revenue, which drove the Q1 beat and underpins Q2 guidance of about $11.20 billion in total revenue.

AMD’s valuation is stretched, with a forward P/E of 77 on a stock up 141.79% year to date leaves little room for execution slips. But, the shipments behind those gigawatts are what the next earnings report will need to prove. That is the number that decides whether the pressure on rivals turns into permanent market share.

Act now: the analyst who called NVIDIA in 2010 just named his top 10 AI stocks — and AMD didn't make the cut. Grab the names FREE today.

Contact [email protected] for any questions or corrections.

Key Takeaways NKE's recovery is uneven as running, training and North America improve, but Sportswear and China drag.NIKE Direct revenues fell 7% in Q4 fiscal 2026, with Digital down 12% and owned stores down 7%.Wholesale offers relief, rising 4% in Q4 fiscal 2026 and 6% for the year, led mainly by North America. NIKE, Inc. (NKE - Free Report) is trying to turn a narrower set of operating wins into a broader recovery. The problem is that the gains are still uneven.

Running, global football, training and North America are improving. Sportswear, Jordan Streetwear, NIKE Direct and Greater China continue to pressure demand, pricing and near-term visibility.

NKE Recovery Is Split by CategoryThe clearest progress is coming from performance categories. Running has delivered five consecutive quarters of double-digit growth and added roughly $1 billion over that span. Performance product grew mid-single digits in fiscal 2026, with positive retail sales comparisons across running, training and global football in the fourth quarter.

Management expects growth to expand beyond running into training, basketball and ACG in fiscal 2027. Still, Sportswear and Jordan Streetwear remain weak. Sell-through is challenged, discounting is elevated and future order books are being affected.

NIKE Direct Still Drags on GrowthNIKE Direct remains one of the biggest gaps in the recovery. In the fourth quarter of fiscal 2026, NIKE Direct revenues fell 7% on a reported basis and 9% on a currency-neutral basis to $4.1 billion. NIKE Brand Digital declined 12%, while NIKE-owned stores were down 7%.

The weakness matters because Sportswear and Jordan Streetwear together represent about half of NIKE’s revenues. NIKE is reducing promotions, repositioning digital as a premium business and working to elevate 50% of its owned-store fleet by the end of fiscal 2027. That reset can help brand health, but it also slows the pace of revenue improvement.

NKE Wholesale Rebound Offers Some ReliefWholesale is providing a partial offset. Fourth-quarter fiscal 2026 wholesale revenues rose 4% on a reported basis and 1% on a currency-neutral basis to $6.6 billion, driven mainly by North America. In fiscal 2026, wholesale revenues increased 6% on a reported basis and 4% on a currency-neutral basis.

NIKE is rebuilding partner relationships through curated assortments, better in-store presentation and sport-led storytelling. DICK’S Sporting Goods Inc.’s (DKS - Free Report) Foot Locker is an important marker in that process, as NIKE’s revenue growth and retail sales comparisons as the retailer turned positive for the first time in four years. adidas AG (ADDYY - Free Report) , a major athletic footwear and apparel peer, remains a useful comparison point for investors watching whether NIKE can regain product momentum while protecting brand premium.

NIKE China Reset Clouds Near-Term VisibilityGreater China remains a major overhang. Fourth-quarter revenues in the region fell 12% on a reported basis and 17% on a currency-neutral basis to $1.3 billion. NIKE Direct declined 14%, including a 25% drop in NIKE Digital and a 9% decrease in NIKE stores, while wholesale declined 19%.

In fiscal 2026, Greater China revenues declined 11% on a reported basis and 13% on a currency-neutral basis to $5.85 billion. NIKE has seen digital full-price realization improve and inventory decline by double digits, but management expects near-term revenue trends in the region to remain in line with recent performance.

NKE Signals Point to Ongoing CautionThe bottom line is that NIKE’s recovery has real operational green shoots, but not enough broad-based strength yet. Performance categories and wholesale are improving, while Sportswear, Jordan Streetwear, direct channels and China continue to weigh on the pace of a cleaner rebound.

NKE currently carries a Zacks Rank #4 (Sell). The stock also has a Value Score of D, Growth Score of F, Momentum Score of F and VGM Score of F. Style Scores are designed to complement the Zacks Rank, with stronger grades generally pointing to more favorable value, growth or momentum characteristics.

You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

For NIKE, those signals support a cautious stance. A weak Rank reflects pressure in earnings estimate trends, while weak Style Scores suggest limited support from valuation, growth and momentum factors. Until category strength spreads more widely across channels and geographies, the stock outlook remains tied to execution proof rather than early signs of improvement.

The artificial intelligence (AI) bellwether has had its bell rung lately. Is the ding a dinner bell for opportunistic investors? Nvidia (NVDA 0.88%) may have kicked off the AI revolution a couple of years ago, but the market has been rotating out of the global leader lately.

Nvidia stock has fallen 14% since hitting an all-time high in May. Despite inching higher through the first three trading days of this week, the shares are lower over the past month. It's a stunning contrast to the overall market, which is clawing toward fresh highs.

Image source: Getty Images.

Rotation out of the leading AI chipmaker while business is still booming is surprising, but it's not without precedent. More importantly, it's not likely to be permanent. Bullish market sentiment turning its buy order attention to the next step of AI beneficiaries, including memory and data storage manufacturers, earlier this year, isn't outlandish, even if that segment has come under selling pressure in recent weeks.

You can go up and down the pick-and-shovel ecosystem in the near term. It just seems as if you can't ignore the lead horse over the long run.

Nvidia stock is facing plenty of challenges right now, but they seem small compared to the opportunity. Let's take a closer look at the company that continues to be the largest player by market cap, but one that is now the cheapest that it's been in years, according to one popular valuation metric.

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You can buy Nvidia for just 16 times next year's earnings You read that subhead correctly. Nvidia is now trading for 23 times this fiscal year's earnings, but an even more jaw-dropping 16 times next year's analyst profit target. There are some potential headwinds out there, and I don't want to dismiss them.

China's DeepSeek is making waves again. Its latest DSpark inference module reportedly improves AI rendering speed by up to 85% without requiring new hardware. If you can do more with existing hardware, there is no need to upgrade to Nvidia's shiniest new chips. That's not something you just sweep under the rug, but do you remember when Nvidia tumbled in early 2025, when DeepSeek made headlines? Nvidia's growing client base needs reliability more than it craves the gamble of cutting corners.

Nvidia's revenue has accelerated for three consecutive quarters. The 85% top-line jump it posted in its fiscal first quarter is the strongest increase in a year and a half. The growth rate isn't sustainable, but it shows that the initial DeepSeek headlines didn't slow Nvidia's skyrocketing trajectory.

Bears can point to growing competition in AI chips and Chinese trade restrictions. Nvidia just had its first major debt offering in five years. Demand is outpacing the uptick in competitors and trade restrictions. Betting against Nvidia could be a mistake here, especially with Nvidia shares at their cheapest level in years.

It all adds up The chart is interesting. The purple line is Nvidia's stock, which has had a stellar run as a market leader, more than tripling over the past three years. The blue line is Nvidia's earnings multiple for the current fiscal year. You see it drop come late January, when the baton is passed to the next fiscal year, but notice how hype exceeded reality in 2024 (Nvidia's fiscal 2025) before normalizing a year later and outright reversing this year. The orange line -- looking out to bottom-line forecasts for the following fiscal year -- is understandably a year ahead of that swing in valuation momentum.

Saying that Nvidia is trading for just 16 times next year's Wall Street profit target means that it's cheaper than the S&P 500 itself. Should Nvidia really be trading at a discount to the market when it's growing considerably faster? Nvidia's growth will decelerate at this point, and margins may contract as rivals improve their hardware alternatives.

The problem -- and your opportunity -- is that this is the same bear case that has been debunked in recent quarters. Nvidia keeps getting stronger, and analyst profit estimates keep rising. In short, by the end of the next fiscal year, there's a fair chance that Nvidia stock's snapshot today was trading for a lot less than 16 times next year's earnings.

Ding? It's your move.

The market expects GE Aerospace (GE - Free Report) to deliver a year-over-year increase in earnings on higher revenues when it reports results for the quarter ended June 2026. This widely-known consensus outlook is important in assessing the company's earnings picture, but a powerful factor that might influence its near-term stock price is how the actual results compare to these estimates.

The earnings report, which is expected to be released on July 16, might help the stock move higher if these key numbers are better than expectations. On the other hand, if they miss, the stock may move lower.

While the sustainability of the immediate price change and future earnings expectations will mostly depend on management's discussion of business conditions on the earnings call, it's worth handicapping the probability of a positive EPS surprise.

Zacks Consensus EstimateThis industrial conglomerate is expected to post quarterly earnings of $1.86 per share in its upcoming report, which represents a year-over-year change of +12.1%.

Revenues are expected to be $11.86 billion, up 16.8% from the year-ago quarter.

Estimate Revisions TrendThe consensus EPS estimate for the quarter has remained unchanged over the last 30 days. This is essentially a reflection of how the covering analysts have collectively reassessed their initial estimates over this period.

Investors should keep in mind that an aggregate change may not always reflect the direction of estimate revisions by each of the covering analysts.

Price, Consensus and EPS Surprise

Earnings WhisperEstimate revisions ahead of a company's earnings release offer clues to the business conditions for the period whose results are coming out. Our proprietary surprise prediction model -- the Zacks Earnings ESP (Expected Surprise Prediction) -- has this insight at its core.

The Zacks Earnings ESP compares the Most Accurate Estimate to the Zacks Consensus Estimate for the quarter; the Most Accurate Estimate is a more recent version of the Zacks Consensus EPS estimate. The idea here is that analysts revising their estimates right before an earnings release have the latest information, which could potentially be more accurate than what they and others contributing to the consensus had predicted earlier.

Thus, a positive or negative Earnings ESP reading theoretically indicates the likely deviation of the actual earnings from the consensus estimate. However, the model's predictive power is significant for positive ESP readings only.

A positive Earnings ESP is a strong predictor of an earnings beat, particularly when combined with a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy), 2 (Buy) or 3 (Hold). Our research shows that stocks with this combination produce a positive surprise nearly 70% of the time, and a solid Zacks Rank actually increases the predictive power of Earnings ESP.

Please note that a negative Earnings ESP reading is not indicative of an earnings miss. Our research shows that it is difficult to predict an earnings beat with any degree of confidence for stocks with negative Earnings ESP readings and/or Zacks Rank of 4 (Sell) or 5 (Strong Sell).

How Have the Numbers Shaped Up for GE?For GE, the Most Accurate Estimate is higher than the Zacks Consensus Estimate, suggesting that analysts have recently become bullish on the company's earnings prospects. This has resulted in an Earnings ESP of +2.79%.

On the other hand, the stock currently carries a Zacks Rank of #2.

So, this combination indicates that GE will most likely beat the consensus EPS estimate.

Does Earnings Surprise History Hold Any Clue?While calculating estimates for a company's future earnings, analysts often consider to what extent it has been able to match past consensus estimates. So, it's worth taking a look at the surprise history for gauging its influence on the upcoming number.

For the last reported quarter, it was expected that GE would post earnings of $1.61 per share when it actually produced earnings of $1.86, delivering a surprise of +15.53%.

Over the last four quarters, the company has beaten consensus EPS estimates four times.

Bottom LineAn earnings beat or miss may not be the sole basis for a stock moving higher or lower. Many stocks end up losing ground despite an earnings beat due to other factors that disappoint investors. Similarly, unforeseen catalysts help a number of stocks gain despite an earnings miss.

That said, betting on stocks that are expected to beat earnings expectations does increase the odds of success. This is why it's worth checking a company's Earnings ESP and Zacks Rank ahead of its quarterly release. Make sure to utilize our Earnings ESP Filter to uncover the best stocks to buy or sell before they've reported.

GE appears a compelling earnings-beat candidate. However, investors should pay attention to other factors too for betting on this stock or staying away from it ahead of its earnings release.

Expected Results of an Industry PlayerGE Aerospace (GE - Free Report) , another stock in the Zacks Aerospace - Defense industry, is expected to report earnings per share of $1.86 for the quarter ended June 2026. This estimate points to a year-over-year change of +12.1%. Revenues for the quarter are expected to be $11.86 billion, up 16.8% from the year-ago quarter.

The consensus EPS estimate for GE has remained unchanged over the last 30 days. However, a higher Most Accurate Estimate has resulted in an Earnings ESP of +2.79%.

This Earnings ESP, combined with its Zacks Rank #2 (Buy), suggests that GE will most likely beat the consensus EPS estimate. The company beat consensus EPS estimates in each of the trailing four quarters.

Stay on top of upcoming earnings announcements with the Zacks Earnings Calendar.

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Starbucks is developing in-house systems that could replace software it buys from Big Tech companies, Bloomberg News reported Thursday (July 9).

The coffee chain is working on alternatives to a system from Microsoft that monitors inventory as well as a maintenance management tool from IBM, the report said, citing an internal presentation.

Starbucks has also been working for several years on creating a point-of-sale system that would replace Oracle Simphony, according to the report.

Starbucks declined to comment when reached by PYMNTS beyond sharing a company blog post about its approach to AI.

The moves are part of a larger shift happening in the business world.

“For two decades, buying enterprise software meant accepting a vendor’s feature set, paying per seat and hiring specialists to manage the platform,” PYMNTS reported Wednesday (July 8). “For small businesses, that model often meant paying for capabilities they never used. AI coding tools are changing that calculation.”

Five startups and small companies with staff ranging from 20 to 70 people switched from working with Salesforce and HubSpot in the last six months, turning instead to in-house applications built using AI tools from Anthropic, Lovable and Replit. These businesses reduced software costs by 40% to 80%.

Research and advisory firm Gartner found that up to $234 billion of enterprise application software spending will be exposed to agentic arbitrage by the end of 2030, or roughly 20% of all enterprise software-as-a-service spending.

“Agentic AI changes the economics of software,” George Brocklehurst, managing vice president at Gartner, said in a July 1 news release.

Retool, a low-code platform for building custom internal tools, found that 35% of enterprises have already swapped out at least one SaaS tool with a custom-built alternative, with 78% saying they intend to develop more this year.

Starbucks spends roughly $400 million per year just on software, Chief Technology Officer Anand Varadarajan told employees in an internal forum earlier this year, according to the Bloomberg report.

“There’s clear opportunities to reduce the spend in software,” Varadarajan said, per the report.

While in-house software can be cheaper for companies like Starbucks, which hopes to lower costs by $2 billion for its turnaround plan, building can lead businesses to pay more for maintenance and labor, the report said.

For most of 2026, Intel (INTC +2.68%) was the comeback story of the chip sector. The stock had more than tripled on the belief that its new 18A manufacturing process would finally put the company back on the leading edge. Then, over the past week, the rally came apart.

Intel shares have tumbled about 21% in a week, trading at about $110 as of this writing. That is a jarring reversal for one of the market's best performers this year.

So what actually broke the rally? Three separate pressures landed at nearly the same time. Here's a look at each -- and which one should matter most to investors.

Image source: Getty Images.

The 18A payoff got pushed out Intel's whole 2026 run rested on one idea: that 18A, its most advanced process, would ramp this year and pull the money-losing foundry business toward profitability.

Reports over the past week complicated that story. According to industry reports, 18A yields (the share of chips that come off the line usable) may not reach profitable levels until late 2026 or 2027 -- later than bulls had assumed.

That timing matters because Intel is still losing money in manufacturing. In the first quarter of 2026, Intel foundry generated less than $200 million in external customer revenue and posted a steep operating loss. The longer 18A takes to yield well, the longer investors wait for the payoff on a stock that had already priced success in.

Yields aren't a minor detail, either. Every chip that comes off the line unusable is wasted wafer cost, so weak yields squeeze Intel's revenue and its margins at the same time.

This is the pressure that should worry shareholders most. The other two are about competition and mood. This one goes to the heart of why the stock ran in the first place.

AMD passed it in the data center In the first quarter of 2026, AMD out-earned Intel in the data center.

In the first quarter of 2026, AMD's data-center segment generated $5.8 billion in revenue, up 57% year over year. Intel's own data-center business brought in $5.1 billion, up a respectable 22%. The crossover stings, because data-center chips have been Intel's stronghold for decades.

There is some nuance worth noting. AMD's segment includes its Instinct artificial intelligence (AI) accelerators, not just server processors, so part of that lead is a graphics-chip story. Specifically for server processors, Intel still ships about two-thirds of the units. But it now collects only a little more than half the revenue, because AMD keeps winning the higher-priced chips.

Either way, the direction is clear: Intel's grip on its most profitable market is loosening.

A sectorwide sell-off did the rest The final pressure had nothing to do with Intel specifically. A widely read note from a big bank warned of bubble-like conditions in AI stocks, and even a record profit from memory maker Samsung -- read as a sign the memory boom was peaking -- did nothing to lift the mood. Chip stocks sold off across the board.

Intel, already wobbling on its own news, fell harder than most. When sentiment turns against a whole sector, the names with the shakiest stories tend to get hit worst -- and Intel had just handed the market two fresh reasons to worry. The sell-off erased roughly a fifth of the company's market value in a matter of days.

Today's Change

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Does the crash change the case? So has a 21% drop made Intel a bargain? I don't think it's that simple.

Two of the three pressures are arguably just noise. Sector sentiment will swing back eventually, and AMD's data-center lead, while real, was hardly a secret. But the 18A delay is different. It pushes out the single event the bull case was built around, even as the foundry is still burning cash.

And even after the drop, Intel isn't obviously cheap. It's unprofitable on a trailing basis, and its stock still trades at more than 100 times expected earnings over the next 12 months -- a far richer multiple than the broader market, which sits in the low-to-mid 20s.

To be fair, Intel's data-center revenue is still growing, its foundry is slowly signing up outside customers, and 18A may yet ramp on a reasonable timeline. But the stock had been priced for that ramp to materialize this year, and that assumption just took a real hit. Personally, I'd want hard evidence that 18A yields are improving before treating this crash as an opportunity rather than a warning.