Track market-moving stories before they get noisy

Meta (META.O) rolled out on Tuesday a long-touted AI assistant that can autonomously send emails, sell a car and book travel ‌on a person's behalf, despite internal concerns that the technology mismanages its access to sensitive personal data.

The company's Muse agent, known internally as Hatch, is the centerpiece of CEO Mark Zuckerberg's plan to offer "personal superintelligence" to the billions of people who use Meta's services daily.

The product will be available only in the U.S. initially, via a ​dedicated Muse app or Meta's WhatsApp messaging service, Meta said in its announcement. Meta said it plans to add the agent to ​its line of smart glasses "soon," without elaborating.

Modeled on the open-source AI agent OpenClaw, Muse is designed to access a ⁠person's apps across categories like email, calendar, payments, health, shopping and the smart home, Meta said. People choose which apps it connects to and ​can revoke access at any time.

Each Muse agent runs on its own virtual machine, a cloud-based emulation of a personal computer, which enables it to ​keep carrying out requests in the background even when a person is not actively using it.

Syncing up with apps containing a person's real data increases the agent's potential utility, while also significantly raising the stakes for safety and reliability issues, both for users who have entrusted it with their information and others who may be on ​the receiving end of agent misbehavior.

Vishal Shah, vice president of AI products at Meta, said the company had initially delayed the release of the ​product in April to make it more secure. Meta determined the extra work had allowed it to "cross the threshold" and meet its minimum requirements for product safety, ‌security, privacy, ⁠model performance and other metrics.

"It is impossible to say that there is never going to be a mistake, but every single part of the architecture has been designed to make this as safe, as secure, as private as we can possibly make it," Shah said in an interview.

INTERNAL TESTS REVEAL MIXED RESULTS
As recently as this week, Meta employees testing the tool have reported mixed results with Muse, with one person praising its utility in ​vacation planning and others describing cases ​in which it disconnected without ⁠explanation and uploaded sensitive information without permission, according to internal posts seen by Reuters.

One person wrote that the product had been so useful in arranging itineraries and ground transportation that it had become "the third participant" on a ​recent three-week honeymoon in Indonesia.

In another post, an employee who had prompted Muse to monitor for tickets ​and other items that ⁠sell out quickly reported encountering "many failure modes that made it unreliable." The product stopped refreshing the page after about 15 minutes, silently ignored other errors and at times disabled monitoring "for no apparent reason," the person said.

Meta Chief Technology Officer Andrew Bosworth posted that he kept getting logged out and needing to ⁠log back ​in, sometimes several times within a few minutes.

Others flagged serious security flaws, like an agent ​routing around guardrails to expose a person's personal iCloud photos after being prompted to identify toys visible in pictures from a child's birthday party.

Meta did not immediately respond to a ​request for comment on the specific incidents described in the internal posts.

Meta unveiled a new artificial intelligence agent designed to carry out tasks on a user's behalf. Meta said the tool, called Muse, will assist with online shopping, buying movie tickets and scheduling appointments.

Freestone Grove Partners LP purchased a new stake in Tesla, Inc. (NASDAQ:TSLA – Free Report) during the 2nd quarter, according to the company in its most recent disclosure with the Securities & Exchange Commission. The institutional investor purchased 28,930 shares of the electric vehicle producer’s stock, valued at approximately $12,168,000.

Several other large investors have also modified their holdings of the business. Chapman Financial Group LLC purchased a new stake in Tesla in the 2nd quarter valued at approximately $26,000. Friedenthal Financial grew its holdings in Tesla by 66.7% during the 1st quarter. Friedenthal Financial now owns 75 shares of the electric vehicle producer’s stock valued at $28,000 after buying an additional 30 shares during the last quarter. Turning Point Benefit Group Inc. purchased a new position in Tesla during the third quarter worth $30,000. Texas Capital Bancshares Inc TX acquired a new position in shares of Tesla in the third quarter worth $31,000. Finally, Harborfront Financial Group LLC acquired a new position in shares of Tesla in the second quarter worth $34,000. 66.20% of the stock is currently owned by institutional investors and hedge funds.

Tesla Price Performance Shares of NASDAQ:TSLA opened at $354.08 on Tuesday. The company has a current ratio of 1.94, a quick ratio of 1.55 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.09. The firm has a market cap of $1.40 trillion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 327.85, a PEG ratio of 17.88 and a beta of 1.84. The stock’s 50-day moving average price is $357.06 and its two-hundred day moving average price is $382.45. Tesla, Inc. has a 12-month low of $297.38 and a 12-month high of $498.83.

Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA – Get Free Report) last posted its quarterly earnings data on Thursday, July 23rd. The electric vehicle producer reported $0.33 EPS for the quarter, missing analysts’ consensus estimates of $0.50 by ($0.17). The company had revenue of $28.24 billion for the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $26.42 billion. Tesla had a net margin of 3.67% and a return on equity of 3.82%. The company’s revenue was up 25.5% compared to the same quarter last year. During the same period in the prior year, the company earned $0.33 EPS. On average, research analysts forecast that Tesla, Inc. will post 0.88 EPS for the current year. Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades A number of analysts recently commented on the company. Roth Capital reaffirmed a “buy” rating and set a $505.00 price objective on shares of Tesla in a research note on Thursday, July 23rd. Truist Financial set a $370.00 target price on shares of Tesla and gave the company a “hold” rating in a research note on Thursday, July 23rd. The Goldman Sachs Group began coverage on shares of Tesla in a research note on Friday, June 5th. They set a “buy” rating on the stock. Evercore upgraded shares of Tesla from a “hold” rating to an “outperform” rating in a report on Friday, June 5th. Finally, William Blair reissued a “market perform” rating on shares of Tesla in a research report on Thursday, July 2nd. One investment analyst has rated the stock with a Strong Buy rating, twenty-two have issued a Buy rating, eighteen have given a Hold rating and four have assigned a Sell rating to the company. Based on data from MarketBeat, the company currently has an average rating of “Hold” and an average price target of $401.74.

Read Our Latest Stock Analysis on Tesla

Key Tesla News Here are the key news stories impacting Tesla this week:

Positive Sentiment: European FSD expansion: Tesla’s supervised Full Self-Driving system received a regulatory green light in Slovenia, potentially supporting wider European deployment and additional high-margin software revenue. Tesla also cited safety data showing 4.1 times fewer collisions than manually driven Teslas in five European markets. Tesla FSD Supervised Gets Regulatory Green Light in Slovenia Positive Sentiment: Robotaxi opportunity: Tesla has begun limited paid Cybercab rides in Austin. Goldman Sachs believes the purpose-built vehicle could have a cost advantage in robotaxis, while Cathie Wood and other Tesla bulls continue to view autonomy, Optimus and AI as major long-term growth opportunities. Cybercab Could Transform Tesla, But Regulatory Risks Loom Positive Sentiment: AI ecosystem narrative: Investor interest remains focused on Tesla’s integration of FSD, Grok and the Optimus humanoid robot, as well as its indirect exposure to SpaceX. Supporters argue these businesses could eventually justify Tesla’s premium valuation. Cathie Wood Has Stuck With Tesla Through Repeated Missed Robotaxi Deadlines About Tesla (Free Report)

Tesla, Inc (NASDAQ: TSLA) is an American company that designs, manufactures and sells electric vehicles, energy generation and energy storage products. Founded in 2003 by Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning, Tesla grew into a vertically integrated mobility and clean‑energy company with Elon Musk serving as its chief executive officer. The company’s stated mission is to accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy, reflected in its combined focus on electric drivetrains, battery technology, renewable energy products and software.

Tesla’s automotive business includes a lineup of battery‑electric vehicles and related services.

Featured Articles Five stocks we like better than Tesla 3 Under-the-Radar Defense Stocks With Record Backlogs This Korea ETF Has Soared, But the Rally May Not Be Over Why Guidewire’s Post-Earnings Plunge May Not Last Ride-Share Reckoning: Tesla Drives Into Uber’s Lane

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Corient Private Wealth LP acquired a new stake in shares of Tesla, Inc. (NASDAQ:TSLA – Free Report) in the second quarter, according to the company in its most recent disclosure with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The institutional investor acquired 935,745 shares of the electric vehicle producer’s stock, valued at approximately $393,178,000.

Several other hedge funds have also modified their holdings of TSLA. Permanens Capital L.P. acquired a new stake in shares of Tesla in the second quarter worth approximately $397,000. Philadelphia Investment Partners LLC increased its position in Tesla by 445.1% during the second quarter. Philadelphia Investment Partners LLC now owns 834 shares of the electric vehicle producer’s stock worth $351,000 after purchasing an additional 681 shares during the last quarter. Atreides Management LP raised its stake in Tesla by 1.7% during the second quarter. Atreides Management LP now owns 204,275 shares of the electric vehicle producer’s stock worth $85,918,000 after purchasing an additional 3,480 shares during the period. Bamco Inc. NY boosted its holdings in shares of Tesla by 5.0% in the 2nd quarter. Bamco Inc. NY now owns 12,524,752 shares of the electric vehicle producer’s stock valued at $5,267,911,000 after purchasing an additional 591,243 shares during the last quarter. Finally, Bluefin Capital Management LLC acquired a new position in shares of Tesla in the 2nd quarter valued at $1,262,000. 66.20% of the stock is owned by institutional investors and hedge funds.

Tesla Stock Performance Tesla stock opened at $354.08 on Tuesday. The firm has a market capitalization of $1.40 trillion, a PE ratio of 327.85, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 17.88 and a beta of 1.84. Tesla, Inc. has a one year low of $297.38 and a one year high of $498.83. The stock’s 50 day moving average price is $357.06 and its 200 day moving average price is $382.45. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.09, a quick ratio of 1.55 and a current ratio of 1.94.

Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA – Get Free Report) last issued its quarterly earnings data on Thursday, July 23rd. The electric vehicle producer reported $0.33 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, missing the consensus estimate of $0.50 by ($0.17). The firm had revenue of $28.24 billion during the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $26.42 billion. Tesla had a net margin of 3.67% and a return on equity of 3.82%. The firm’s revenue was up 25.5% compared to the same quarter last year. During the same period last year, the business earned $0.33 EPS. As a group, sell-side analysts expect that Tesla, Inc. will post 0.88 EPS for the current fiscal year. Analysts Set New Price Targets A number of analysts have recently commented on the company. Phillip Securities dropped their price objective on Tesla from $220.00 to $215.00 and set a “sell” rating for the company in a report on Wednesday, May 13th. JPMorgan Chase & Co. reduced their target price on Tesla from $475.00 to $445.00 and set a “neutral” rating on the stock in a report on Thursday, July 23rd. HSBC restated a “hold” rating on shares of Tesla in a research note on Monday, June 15th. Citizens Jmp initiated coverage on Tesla in a report on Thursday, July 9th. They issued a “market perform” rating on the stock. Finally, Deutsche Bank Aktiengesellschaft set a $420.00 price objective on Tesla in a research note on Monday, July 27th. One research analyst has rated the stock with a Strong Buy rating, twenty-two have issued a Buy rating, eighteen have given a Hold rating and four have assigned a Sell rating to the company. According to MarketBeat.com, Tesla presently has a consensus rating of “Hold” and a consensus target price of $401.74.

Check Out Our Latest Research Report on Tesla

Key Tesla News Here are the key news stories impacting Tesla this week:

Positive Sentiment: European FSD expansion: Tesla’s supervised Full Self-Driving system received a regulatory green light in Slovenia, potentially supporting wider European deployment and additional high-margin software revenue. Tesla also cited safety data showing 4.1 times fewer collisions than manually driven Teslas in five European markets. Tesla FSD Supervised Gets Regulatory Green Light in Slovenia Positive Sentiment: Robotaxi opportunity: Tesla has begun limited paid Cybercab rides in Austin. Goldman Sachs believes the purpose-built vehicle could have a cost advantage in robotaxis, while Cathie Wood and other Tesla bulls continue to view autonomy, Optimus and AI as major long-term growth opportunities. Cybercab Could Transform Tesla, But Regulatory Risks Loom Positive Sentiment: AI ecosystem narrative: Investor interest remains focused on Tesla’s integration of FSD, Grok and the Optimus humanoid robot, as well as its indirect exposure to SpaceX. Supporters argue these businesses could eventually justify Tesla’s premium valuation. Cathie Wood Has Stuck With Tesla Through Repeated Missed Robotaxi Deadlines About Tesla (Free Report)

Tesla, Inc (NASDAQ: TSLA) is an American company that designs, manufactures and sells electric vehicles, energy generation and energy storage products. Founded in 2003 by Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning, Tesla grew into a vertically integrated mobility and clean‑energy company with Elon Musk serving as its chief executive officer. The company’s stated mission is to accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy, reflected in its combined focus on electric drivetrains, battery technology, renewable energy products and software.

Tesla’s automotive business includes a lineup of battery‑electric vehicles and related services.

Read More Five stocks we like better than Tesla 3 Under-the-Radar Defense Stocks With Record Backlogs This Korea ETF Has Soared, But the Rally May Not Be Over Why Guidewire’s Post-Earnings Plunge May Not Last Ride-Share Reckoning: Tesla Drives Into Uber’s Lane Want to see what other hedge funds are holding TSLA? Visit HoldingsChannel.com to get the latest 13F filings and insider trades for Tesla, Inc. (NASDAQ:TSLA – Free Report).

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Tesla Inc‘s (NASDAQ:TSLA) Bitcoin (CRYPTO:$BTC) investment has become one of the longest-running corporate crypto bets on Wall Street—but it looks very different today than it did in 2021.

After selling most of its holdings during the 2022 crypto downturn, the electric vehicle maker still owns 11,509 Bitcoin, a position worth roughly $902 million at Bitcoin’s current price of about $78,700.

Tesla disclosed in February 2021 a $1.5 billion Bitcoin purchase, becoming one of the first major public companies to add the cryptocurrency to its balance sheet. The move, announced in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing, was widely viewed as a vote of confidence in Bitcoin as both a treasury asset and an alternative store of value.

Just weeks later, Bitcoin’s rally pushed Tesla’s position above $2.5 billion on paper. But the company’s strategy changed dramatically in 2022.

During the second quarter of 2022, Tesla sold approximately 75% of its Bitcoin holdings, citing the need to maximize cash amid COVID-related uncertainty in China rather than a change in its view of Bitcoin. The sale reduced Tesla’s holdings to roughly 11,509 BTC, where they have remained ever since.

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Bitcoin Holdings TodayAlthough Tesla has made no significant changes to its Bitcoin treasury in years, the position remains one of the largest held by a publicly traded operating company. That makes it a closely watched barometer for how traditional corporations approach digital assets.

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At today’s Bitcoin current price hovering at around $78,700, Tesla’s remaining holdings are worth about $902 million—still below the company’s original $1.5 billion investment despite Bitcoin’s recovery from the depths of the 2022 crypto bear market.

The contrast highlights an often-overlooked aspect of Tesla’s Bitcoin story: it’s no longer represents an aggressive corporate buyer of Bitcoin. Instead, it has effectively become a long-term holder, allowing the value of its treasury to rise and fall with the market without materially changing its position.

What Investors Should WatchTesla’s Bitcoin holdings are no longer large enough to define the company’s financial performance, but they remain an important signal of management’s capital allocation strategy. Any future purchase, sale, or commentary on digital assets would likely attract outsized attention because Tesla remains one of the few global blue-chip companies with a meaningful Bitcoin treasury.

For investors, the key question is no longer whether Tesla will become a larger Bitcoin buyer.

Instead, it is whether the company continues treating its remaining 11,509 BTC as a strategic long-term asset—or decides the time is right to finally close the chapter on one of corporate America’s most influential crypto investments.

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Elon Musk's brief stint as the world's first trillionaire is slipping away fast, and the forces dragging him back down reveal deep cracks in two of his most powerful companies.

The trillionaire status Elon Musk posted in early June, largely on the back of a run-up in SpaceX (NASDAQ:  SPCX | SPCX Price Prediction) stock after its IPO, is gone, and he’s unlikely to regain it this year. Tesla’s (NASDAQ: TSLA) stock is in trouble as it has dropped this year. SpaceX’s stock is off 8% since it went public.

A turnaround in the stock prices of at least one of the companies is almost the only way Musk gets back to $1 trillion. Based on the Bloomberg Billionaire Index, he is just above $900 billion.

There is nothing wrong with the SpaceX rocket business or the Starlink “internet from the sky” division. SpaceX remains the only game in town for commercial satellite launches. Starlink can be used in 160 countries. It may never have any real competition. Starlink has over 11,000 low-orbit satellites, and Musk says that figure could rise into the tens of thousands.

SpaceX is dragged down by its xAI AI product. Grok, the public face of its products, is barely in a sector controlled by OpenAI, Anthropic, and several mega-tech public companies. Nevertheless, Musk continues to push forward on his mistaken assumption that he can pick up market share. Musk’s gamble, in part, is that he can spend several billion dollars moving AI data centers into orbit. That would create an edge over competitors who need to keep their data centers on the ground. There is growing resistance to these.

Musk appears willing to lease out his data centers to competitors. He has begun to do so with Alphabet (NASDAQ: GOOG) and Anthropic. It gets him cash, but it also seems like a surrender, since he’s leasing capacity.

Tesla has a worse problem. Its car sales may drop this year compared to 2025. And his robot and self-driving cab businesses don’t seem to be going anywhere. Tesla’s stock has dropped 21% since the start.

Musk is not likely to become a trillionaire this year.

Contact [email protected] for any questions or corrections.

Key Takeaways Tesla registrations jumped 279% in France and 104% in Denmark during August.Registrations fell 79% in both Norway and Spain, while Sweden, Portugal and Italy also declined.Tesla's European sales recovery has benefited from easier comparisons, incentives and EV interest. Tesla’s (TSLA - Free Report) August vehicle registrations across key European markets delivered a mixed performance, with sharp increases in France and Denmark offset by steep declines in Norway, Spain, Sweden, Portugal and Italy.

New Tesla registrations, which are generally used as an indicator of sales, jumped 279% year over year in France and 104% in Denmark, per the data from France’s PFA and Denmark’s bilstatistik.dk.

However, registrations plunged 79% in both Norway and Spain, while Sweden, Portugal and Italy recorded declines of 41%, 37% and 36%, respectively, per the data from national automotive industry organizations OFV, Mobility Sweden, ANFAC and ACAP, and Italy's Transport Ministry.

In Norway, the steep decline may partly reflect a difficult comparison with last year, when buyers accelerated purchases ahead of a fiscal policy change scheduled for the end of 2025, per the European auto market analyst Matthias Schmidt.

Tesla’s European sales have generally recovered this year following two consecutive years of declines. The improvement has been supported by easier year-over-year comparisons, higher fuel prices, government incentives and increasing consumer interest in electric vehicles. Registration data from the United Kingdom and Germany, Europe’s two largest auto markets, is expected later this week. TSLA carries a Zacks Rank #4 (Sell) at present.

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

Global Sales Data of Other AutomakersBYD Company Limited (BYDDY - Free Report) reported strong growth in August, selling 440,293 new energy vehicles (NEVs), up 17.8% year over year and 5.03% from July. The figure marked BYD’s highest monthly sales total of the year and extended its recovery with a fourth consecutive year-over-year increase. Passenger NEV sales rose 16.7% year over year to 433,384 units, while BYD’s commercial NEV sales jumped 225.1% to 6,909 units, despite declining from July.

Geely Automobile Holdings Limited (GELHY - Free Report) also recorded another increase in monthly sales, with August deliveries reaching 270,194 vehicles, which increased 8.01% year over year and marked its strongest monthly performance this year. Geely’s overseas shipments were particularly strong, surging 205.2% to 110,094 vehicles. Exports hit a record for the eighth consecutive month and represented about 41% of Geely’s total sales, helping offset continued weakness in its domestic market.

Tesla’s Price Performance, Valuation and EstimatesTesla has underperformed the Zacks Automotive – Domestic industry in the last six months. Tesla has lost 11.2% compared with the industry’s decline of 5.8%.

Image Source: Zacks Investment Research

From a valuation perspective, Tesla appears overvalued. Going by its price/sales ratio, the company is trading at a forward sales multiple of 12.24, higher than the industry’s 3.24.

Image Source: Zacks Investment Research

 
The Zacks Consensus Estimate for 2026 and 2027 EPS has moved down 31 cents and 26 cents, respectively, in the past 60 days.

Image Source: Zacks Investment Research

Anticipation had been building for weeks leading up to last Thursday, and rightly so. Tesla Inc. NASDAQ: TSLA was finally set to launch its Cybercab, the purpose-built robotaxi meant to propel it to the front of the self-driving race, and investors had been sending the shares higher, expecting a landmark moment.

Tesla Today

$368.16 +14.08 (+3.98%)

As of 09/8/2026 04:00 PM Eastern

$297.38▼

$498.83340.89

$401.74

Instead, Thursday’s event landed with a thud. There was no livestream, no appearance from Elon Musk, and crucially, no detail on how Tesla intends to price, scale, or make money from the service. The market's reaction was swift, with the stock sliding nearly 8% from its intraday high into the long holiday weekend, snuffing out what had been shaping up as a promising rally.

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Tesla shares have steadied a little since, but the damage was done, and the stock remains stuck in its months-long downtrend.

Still, with the shares still up around 20% from July's low, it's worth asking whether this stumble marks a serious setback for Tesla's robotaxi ambitions, or whether the dip is actually a buying opportunity.

A Launch That Raised More Questions Than It AnsweredInvestors' core frustration seems to have been a lack of substance. Rather than the bold statement of intent they’d hoped for, the launch amounted to a limited rollout in a small, tightly defined zone of Austin, with barely any of the information the market needed to get excited about its progress.

There were no figures on fares, no targets for fleet growth, and no sense of the all-important economics: cost per mile, utilization rates, or the revenue each vehicle might generate. Without those numbers, it’s hard to tell if the service is really scaling toward a commercial business or merely inching from demonstration into cautious testing.

For a company whose valuation rests so heavily on the promise of autonomy, that absence of hard detail like this was always going to disappoint. The market wanted to see a business take flight; instead, it saw a carefully controlled experiment.

The Regulatory CloudIf the muted launch was the first blow, the second came less than a day later. On Friday, it emerged that federal safety regulators had opened an investigation into the Cybercab, and their focus fell on the vehicle's most radical feature, the one thing that makes its autonomy possible: its complete lack of a steering wheel and pedals.

That headline matters because the Cybercab was never intended to be a modified conventional car like some of its competitors. The fact that its stripped-back design is raising fresh safety concerns strikes at the very thing that was supposed to set it apart. Adding to the uncertainty, it appears some states may push back on Tesla's decision to rely on cameras alone for navigation, rather than using the additional radar and laser sensors favored by some rivals.

None of this is necessarily fatal in the long run, and other robotaxi operators have navigated similar reviews before winning approval. But it introduces a real risk of delay and reminds us that Tesla's path to a nationwide network of self-driving taxis will be bumpy.

Disciplined, or Falling Behind?The limited scale of last week's launch also caught many investors off guard, and it raises a simple question: Are Tesla's robotaxi ambitions definitely on track, or are they being left behind? Both camps make a fair case.

To the optimists, Tesla's narrow rollout is exactly the right call. By starting small in its home city, Tesla can gather data, refine its systems, and avoid the kind of high-profile early failure that could set the whole project back. Management has made this clear, stressing its desire to get things right before expanding into bigger markets, a sensible priority.

The opposing view is less charitable, however. It holds that the limited launch underlines how far behind Tesla remains. Its best-known rival, Alphabet’s Waymo, has already logged hundreds of millions of autonomous miles and is providing hundreds of thousands of paid rides every week across numerous markets, a scale that dwarfs Tesla's tiny Austin footprint.

Making Sense of It AllTesla Stock Forecast Today12-Month Stock Price Forecast:
$401.74
9.12% Upside

Hold
Based on 45 Analyst Ratings

Current Price$368.16High Forecast$600.00Average Forecast$401.74Low Forecast$25.28Tesla Stock Forecast Details

In truth, last Thursday's launch was neither the triumph the bulls wanted, nor the disaster the bears feared. It was an early milestone, proof that Tesla is edging from concept toward a real, deployable product, but not firm evidence it can build a business to rival the established leaders.

That being said, Tesla's longer-term vision for its Cybercab is still compelling. By building the vehicle, the software, and the charging network itself, it could one day run a robotaxi service far more cheaply than rivals reliant on expensive third-party hardware.

But that’s a bet on the future, and last week did little to bring it closer. The stock's negative reaction reflects that disappointment, and it’s perhaps no surprise that Tesla carries a MarketBeat consensus rating of Hold. For now, Tesla appears to have taken a promising first step, but it still has a lot of work to do to fully convince the market it can deliver on its Robotaxi ambitions.

Should You Invest $1,000 in Tesla Right Now?Before you consider Tesla, you'll want to hear this.

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Andrew Sather says most investors only understand one of the two engines driving stock returns, and missing the second one is exactly why a name as familiar as Coca-Cola keeps catching people off guard.

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The least exciting name on your watchlist can outrun the flashiest one when the market has priced in nothing and the business quietly grows. Andrew Sather, co-host of The Investing for Beginners Podcast, argues that most investors understand only one of the two engines driving stock returns. Engine one is straightforward: the stock roughly tracks a growing business. Engine two pays better and confuses more people: you buy a stock whose growth the market refuses to acknowledge, and you collect the difference when sentiment catches up.

Sather says he is “starting to lean more towards” the second engine again because “there’s just more opportunities there.” His worked example is Coca-Cola (NYSE:KO | KO Price Prediction), a name so often dismissed as dead money that the framework has room to embarrass its critics. The wrinkle is that the market may already be recalibrating. Shares are up sharply this year, so the real question becomes whether the re-rating still has room to run.

Two Engines of Return Every stock return comes from either the business or the multiple. If earnings grow and the price/earnings ratio holds steady, the stock tracks earnings. If earnings hold steady and the multiple expands, the stock rises anyway.

Sather framed it this way: “it’s not always margin of safety, it’s not always high growth. It’s which combination of the two at any given point in time is going to lead to higher returns.” One factor without the other tends to disappoint.

What Margin of Safety Looks Like in Practice Margin of safety is the gap between what a business is likely worth and what the market is charging you today. You look for durable free cash flow, a share count that isn’t drifting higher, and a story most people find boring.

Coca-Cola’s free cash flow yield sits around 1.40%, and the forward dividend is $2.12. The safety comes from durability: 63 consecutive years of dividend increases and $8.8 billion paid in 2025.

Coca-Cola as the Worked Example Sather characterizes the dead-money bucket as businesses growing 4% to 6% a year, and Coca-Cola’s second quarter outran that. Revenue was $13.38 billion, up 6.7% year over year, and adjusted EPS of $0.97 against a $0.9323 consensus marked the fifth straight beat.

Guidance was raised: organic revenue growth of about 5%, comparable EPS growth of 9% to 10%, and free cash flow near $12.4 billion. The full detail sits in the Q2 2026 release filed with the SEC.

The stock has responded. Shares closed at $88.07 on September 4, up 27.67% year to date and 32.72% over the past year. Whatever dead money meant a few years ago, it does not describe the stock today.

Operating margin expanded to 34.9% from 34.1%, and net debt leverage sits at 1.4 times EBITDA. Trademark Coca-Cola volume grew 5% globally, the strongest in 17 years excluding COVID recovery, helped by a FIFA World Cup activation across 180+ markets.

At a P/E of 29x, the multiple no longer looks apologetic. If Sather’s thesis was that the market underappreciated the growth, the market has partly caught up.

When the Framework Fails A cheap stock can stay cheap, and underappreciated often turns out to mean declining. Tell the difference by checking whether unit volumes are growing, and not simply revenue.

Coca-Cola’s global unit case volume rose 5%, led by India, China, the US, and Brazil. That confirms demand is real. When volumes shrink while price carries the top line, the runway is finite.

Applying the Two-Factor Check to Your Watchlist For any stock, ask two questions. Is the business actually growing on volume and cash flow, or only on headline revenue? Is the multiple you are paying reasonable against a bearish version of that growth?

If both answers are yes, you own both engines. If growth is present but the multiple is stretched, you are paying for delivery with zero room for error. If the multiple is cheap and growth is absent, you are hoping sentiment shifts before fundamentals confirm the story.

Is KO Stock a Buy? Coca-Cola today reads as a hold. The business is executing, guidance was raised, and the balance sheet is enviable, although the re-rating Sather’s framework anticipated is already visible in the stock. A 29 P/E on a mid-single-digit organic grower leaves a thinner margin of safety than the dead-money label suggests.

Against PepsiCo, which has wrestled with volume declines, Coca-Cola is the stronger operator right now. New capital at these prices needs patience; existing holders collect a 2.32% yield backed by 63 straight annual increases, the kind of streak we screened for in our free Dividend Kings guide.

Contact [email protected] for any questions or corrections.

The soda flopped spectacularly when introduced in 1985, but the company soon bounced back—and so did Dyson.

Uber Technologies Today

UBER

Uber Technologies

$73.06 -2.70 (-3.57%)

As of 09/8/2026 03:59 PM Eastern

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$65.41▼

$101.9916.06

$104.49

The market often misinterprets the structural evolution of logistics networks, pricing them on legacy models rather than future capabilities. This dynamic is currently playing out with Uber Technologies, Inc. NYSE: UBER. On Sept. 3, Uber initiated its first supervised autonomous ride-hailing service in London. By deploying all-electric Ford Mustang Mach-E vehicles powered by Wayve's AI Driver, Uber is demonstrating a clear pivot in its business model.

Rather than absorbing the heavy capital expenditures required to manufacture proprietary autonomous vehicles, Uber is positioning itself as the commercialization and distribution layer for third-party technology. This asset-light approach allows Uber to bridge the gap toward long-term autonomous margins while avoiding the risks of automotive manufacturing. Investors assessing the current valuation might notice a disconnect between the traditional human-driven logistics multiple and the highly scalable, AI-integrated hybrid network being built.

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Steering Clear of ManufacturingUnderstanding the mechanics of the Wayve partnership reveals why this strategy appeals to institutional capital. Wayve utilizes an AV2.0 approach, relying on mapless, hardware-agnostic artificial intelligence (AI) that learns from complex environments rather than relying on traditional hand-coded rules. This adaptability is critical in a regulatory and geographical maze like London, where mapping every variable is nearly impossible.

The structural advantage for Uber rests on the deliberate avoidance of hardware development. Developing self-driving cars requires billions in research, development, and manufacturing overhead. By supplying the localized rider demand and the routing network, Uber allows partners like Wayve to focus on the intelligence while original equipment manufacturers like Ford NYSE: F and Nissan OTCMKTS: NSANY handle the hardware. Over 140,000 London riders have already opted in to the service, suggesting that consumer adoption barriers may be lower than previously anticipated.

This strategy extends well beyond a single city. Uber participated in Wayve's recent $1.5 billion funding round, aligning financial interests to secure global scaling rights across 12 planned markets. With upcoming integration plans for the Nissan LEAF and partnerships with over 30 external autonomous developers, Uber is on track to facilitate autonomous trips in up to 15 cities by the end of 2026. This allows Uber to scale its autonomous offerings globally without the traditional drag of severe capital expenditures.

Refueling With Free Cash FlowAn asset-light model relies heavily on network density and the ability to generate liquidity without internal cash burn. Recent financial disclosures highlight how this transition is already reflected in profitability metrics. During the second quarter of 2026, Uber generated about $2.8 billion in free cash flow and reported gross bookings of nearly $58.0 billion. This represents a 24% year-over-year increase in bookings, providing the exact liquidity framework required to fund external artificial intelligence integrations.

The ongoing shift toward third-party integration directly supports expansion of the earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (EBITDA) margin. Adjusted EBITDA grew 33% year-over-year to $2.8 billion for the quarter, pushing the margin to 4.9%, up from 4.5% a year prior. By letting venture capital and external partners absorb the research and development costs of autonomous driving, Uber preserves its cash flow to reinvest in market share and core platform density.

This density strategy is evident in concurrent corporate actions, such as the ongoing €41.50-per-share (approx. $46) takeover offer for Delivery Hero. Acquiring complementary logistics networks widens the multi-vertical distribution funnel. A denser network of food and freight delivery creates immediate, practical deployment routes for future autonomous fleets. This allows Uber to maximize vehicle utilization rates across a 24-hour cycle, routing autonomous cars for passenger transport during peak hours and logistics delivery during off-peak times.

Valuations Ready to AccelerateCapital flows often lead retail sentiment, and the structural support for Uber rests heavily on institutional accumulation. Institutional investors currently hold roughly 80% of the public float. Over the trailing 12 months, these buyers initiated inflows of nearly $39.12 billion, far outweighing outflows of roughly $10.36 billion. Entities like the Virginia Retirement Systems hold large positions, suggesting a long-term horizon aligned with the autonomous transition.

Uber Technologies Stock Forecast Today12-Month Stock Price Forecast:
$104.49
43.02% Upside

Moderate Buy
Based on 42 Analyst Ratings

Current Price$73.06High Forecast$150.00Average Forecast$104.49Low Forecast$72.00Uber Technologies Stock Forecast Details

From a valuation perspective, Uber trades near $76 with a trailing price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio around 16.8. Compared with broader technology-sector platforms that often command multiples well above 30, the current pricing implies the market still views Uber as a human-reliant logistics business. As the percentage of autonomous trips increases, the marginal cost of routing a vehicle could fall substantially, shifting the business's unit economics.

Sell-side analysts appear to be factoring in this evolution in margins. Of 42 analysts covering Uber Technologies, Inc., 34 maintain a Buy rating, resulting in a consensus of Moderate Buy. A consensus price target near $104 suggests an anticipated upside of roughly 36% from current trading levels.

The recent London rollout serves as tangible proof of concept for the broader analyst community, validating the operational feasibility of replacing human drivers with software in highly congested urban environments.

Plotting the Next DestinationThe integration of Wayve's technology in the United Kingdom provides a clear template for how ride-hailing networks plan to achieve long-term profitability. Transitioning directly from human drivers to fully autonomous fleets carries severe regulatory and operational risks. By steadily phasing in third-party autonomous vehicles to operate alongside human drivers, Uber ensures consistent reliability while gradually lowering the overall cost per trip.

This hybrid approach de-risks the technological rollout while maintaining the supply density required to serve global demand. The combination of strong free cash flow, deep institutional backing, and an expanding global footprint of autonomous partners creates a compelling fundamental setup. Uber is positioning itself not as a car manufacturer, but as the essential operating system for global movement. Investors analyzing the shifting mobility sector might consider adding Uber to their watchlist as the market begins to factor in the long-term margin expansion associated with its software distribution capabilities.

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Tesla Inc‘s (NASDAQ:TSLA) Cybercab has finally moved from concept to commercial service, but its biggest competitor isn’t another automaker—it’s Uber Technologies, Inc. (NYSE:UBER).

While Tesla is building a vertically integrated robotaxi business from the ground up, Uber is assembling an autonomous fleet through partnerships, setting up two very different paths to the future of ride-hailing.

Tesla’s Cybercab StrategyTesla’s robotaxi ambitions center on owning the entire ecosystem. The company develops the vehicle, the autonomous driving software, and the ride-hailing platform, allowing it to capture more of the economics if the model scales successfully.

That vision is now being tested in Austin, where Tesla has launched limited public Cybercab rides using its purpose-built, steering wheel–free vehicle. The rollout is still small, but it marks Tesla’s first attempt to commercialize a robotaxi service built around a vehicle designed exclusively for autonomous ride-hailing.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has repeatedly argued that autonomy could eventually reduce ride costs to a fraction of today’s prices by eliminating the need for human drivers. The company’s long-term thesis depends on achieving enough scale for those lower operating costs to outweigh the substantial upfront investment in vehicles and AI.

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Uber’s Robotaxi NetworkUber is pursuing a fundamentally different strategy.

Rather than building autonomous vehicles, the ride-hailing giant has positioned itself as a marketplace for robotaxis. The company has announced partnerships with multiple autonomous driving developers, giving riders access to different autonomous fleets through a familiar app., including:

Alphabet Inc‘s (NASDAQ:GOOGL) (NASDAQ:GOOG) Google’s Waymo Wayve Amazon.com Inc‘s (NASDAQ:AMZN) Zoox Baidu, Inc‘s (NASDAQ:BIDU) Apollo Go and Nebius Group N.V.‘s (NASDAQ:NBIS) Avride Trending

That approach allows Uber to benefit from advances in self-driving technology without bearing the cost and execution risk of developing its own vehicles.

The contrast is already visible in Austin, where Tesla’s Cybercab service has begun operating.

Early rider comparisons shared online show Cybercab fares on some routes costing more than equivalent Uber rides, although pricing remains highly dynamic and reflects Tesla’s limited fleet size during the initial rollout. Those snapshots offer only a point-in-time comparison, not a definitive measure of long-term economics.

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What Investors Should WatchThe robotaxi race may ultimately be less about who builds the best autonomous vehicle than who controls the customer relationship.

Tesla is betting that owning the vehicle, software and platform will create a durable competitive advantage as autonomous driving matures. Uber, meanwhile, is betting that riders will keep valuing a single marketplace that offers access to multiple robotaxi providers, regardless of who manufactures the vehicles.

For investors, the key metric is unlikely to be today’s fare comparison. Instead, it will be whether Tesla can scale Cybercab production quickly enough to lower costs, or whether Uber’s asset-light platform model proves more resilient in capitalizing on the autonomous transportation market.

Read Next

Image via Shutterstock

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

Alphabet just posted blowout earnings and yet the stock has shed more than 10% from its peak, leaving investors caught between soaring Cloud growth and a balance sheet that suddenly looks very different from a year ago.

Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOG | GOOG Price Prediction) trades at $338.86 after slipping 10.39% over the past month from its recent high of $404.23. Our 24/7 Wall St. price target for Alphabet is $433.88, implying 28.19% upside over the next 12 months. The recommendation is buy at high confidence (90%). In plain terms, we view this dip as an entry opportunity.

Metric Value Current Price $338.86 24/7 Wall St. Price Target $433.88 Upside 28.19% Recommendation BUY Confidence Level 90% Why Alphabet Sold Off Despite a Blowout Quarter Alphabet is up 6.5% year to date and 57.9% over the last year, but the stock has cooled since summer. The pullback came despite strong results.

Q2 2026 revenue hit $119.80 billion, up 24.23% year over year, with EPS of $9.11 versus a $3.0427 estimate. Google Cloud grew 82% to $24.8 billion and Cloud backlog reached $514 billion.

Investors focused on the cost side: capex was $44.92 billion, free cash flow turned negative $5.86 billion, long-term debt climbed to $98.2 billion, and management suspended the buyback while guiding 2026 capex of $175 billion to $185 billion.

That level of spend has to go somewhere, and the power, cooling, and networking suppliers behind these data centers are the subject of a free report on seven AI infrastructure names that aren’t chipmakers. That fear is why GOOG is on sale.

Why Bulls See a Breakout to $450 and Beyond The bull case rests on Cloud and Gemini. Cloud growth has accelerated four straight quarters, from 34% to 48% to 63% to 82%. CEO Sundar Pichai said Alphabet is “more bullish on the opportunities ahead” for generative AI than a year ago.

Gemini API traffic now runs at 22 billion tokens per minute, and nearly 90% of the Fortune 100 use Gemini Enterprise. Analyst coverage skews strongly positive at 57 Buy and 5 Hold ratings, and our bull-case scenario tops out at $450.80.

What Could Send GOOG Back to the Low $300s The bear case starts with the balance sheet. Long-term debt more than doubled to $98.2 billion, interest expense is up roughly 5x year over year, and free cash flow went negative in Q2.

Bulls will counter that Q2 free cash flow was distorted by inventory buildup for TPU deliveries, and management expects the vast majority of TPU revenue to land in 2027. Insider activity is another yellow flag, with 205 recent transactions net selling, though executive selling at mega-caps is routine. Our bear-case price is $364.77.

How Alphabet Compares to Microsoft and Meta Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) is the closest peer on cloud and enterprise AI. MSFT trades at $510.83 and commands a much richer multiple than GOOG. On the same forward P/E of 16, Alphabet looks cheap for a business where Cloud is growing 82% versus Azure’s slower comparable growth. That valuation gap is the core of our buy thesis.

Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:META) at $612.79 is the right digital-advertising comparable. Meta’s ad business is growing fast, but Alphabet pairs Search and YouTube ($11.06 billion in Q2) with a hyperscale cloud Meta cannot match. The peer set makes our $433.88 target look reasonable, arguably conservative.

Company Forward P/E Current Price Alphabet 16 $338.86 Microsoft n/a $510.83 Meta n/a $612.79 Verdict: A High-Confidence BUY Setup My verdict is buy with high confidence, and the 24/7 Wall St. price target of $433.88 reflects both the fundamentals and the factor overlay. The tipping factor is Cloud’s 82% growth against a forward multiple of 16.

The bullish scenario depends on Alphabet converting its $514 billion Cloud backlog into revenue on schedule. The bearish scenario is 2026 capex above $175 billion keeping free cash flow negative into 2027.

Looking further out, here is where our model projects Alphabet could trade, assuming Cloud continues scaling and AI monetization tracks the current trajectory.

Year 24/7 Wall St. Price Target 2026 $361.84 2027 $433.88 2028 $516.01 2029 $593.39 2030 $645.76 These projections assume Alphabet executes on Gemini adoption and Cloud backlog conversion. Significant upside could come from Waymo scaling; the largest downside risk is a regulatory forced separation of Search or ad tech.

Contact [email protected] for any questions or corrections.

AWS and Google Cloud are both burning through tens of billions in capex every quarter, but only one is converting that spending into free cash flow at hyperscale margins right now. Which model actually wins when the 2027 capacity cliff…

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Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN | AMZN Price Prediction) and Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL) both reported Q2 FY2026 results that put the same question in front of investors: how fast does cloud capex turn into cash? AWS delivered its fastest growth in 18 quarters, while Google Cloud accelerated to 82% year-over-year growth. Both are spending like wartime generals. Only one is monetizing at hyperscale margins today.

AWS Prints Profit. Google Cloud Prints Growth. AWS revenue reached $42.2 billion with operating income of $16.6 billion and a 39% operating margin. Andy Jassy said the AWS backlog now sits at $496 billion, roughly two and a half times the level of Q3 2025. Trainium and Graviton are doing real work here: Graviton is used by 98% of Amazon’s top 1,000 EC2 customers, and the AI chips business already runs at more than $25 billion.

Google Cloud posted $24.77 billion in revenue, smaller than AWS but growing more than twice as fast. Sundar Pichai said nearly 90% of the Fortune 100 now use Gemini Enterprise, and the Gemini App has 950 million monthly active users. That is the full-stack pitch: models, TPUs, Search, and YouTube all reinforcing one another.

Business Driver AWS Google Cloud Q2 Revenue $42.2B $24.77B YoY Growth 36.7% 82% Segment Operating Margin 39% Not disclosed this quarter Capex Bills Come Due Differently Amazon spent $53.1 billion on cash capex in Q2 and expects to double its power capacity by the end of 2027 versus 2025. Alphabet’s capex hit $44.92 billion, up 100.1% year over year. Both companies ran negative free cash flow in the quarter.

The funding paths diverge sharply. Amazon covers its bills largely through operating cash flow of $45.4 billion plus debt. Alphabet raised approximately $70 billion in combined equity and debt, and suspended buybacks. Long-term debt jumped from $46.5 billion to $98.2 billion.

AWS Wins on Pure Profit. Alphabet Wins on Speed. Jassy said server investments break even in a little less than three years, then generate cash across a 30-plus year data-center life. That is a long, patient conversion curve backed by proven margins. Alphabet’s speed advantage is different: 82% cloud growth paired with 34% companywide operating margin means demand is compounding faster than at AWS, even if segment profitability lags.

Watching the 2027 Capacity Cliff I want to see whether Amazon’s $496 billion backlog actually flows through to free cash flow as promised, and whether Alphabet’s Gemini enterprise footprint keeps pulling ahead of the growth curve into 2027. Memory and SSD inflation, flagged by Brian Olsavsky, could squeeze both.

Why I Split the Two for Different Investors If you want proven cloud economics and a slower, surer cash payoff, AWS inside Amazon looks cleaner to me. The 39.4% AWS margin is doing real work while retail scales. If you want faster top-line acceleration and full-stack AI optionality, Alphabet fits, especially with 46.21% one-year returns already earned. I would hesitate on both if capex keeps outrunning cash into 2027.

Contact [email protected] for any questions or corrections.

Google is reportedly warning that new regulatory changes in Europe will worsen the search experience for users. As Reuters reported, the tech giant on Tuesday (Sept.

Alphabet Inc. (GOOGL) Presents at Goldman Sachs Communacopia + Technology Conference 2026 Transcript

Alphabet's (GOOGL.O) Google will invest at least €13 billion ($15.1 billion) in artificial intelligence ‌infrastructure in Finland over the next two years and has signed its first nuclear power contract outside the U.S., it said on Wednesday.

The Finnish deal includes a 22-year purchase agreement for up to 50% of the energy output of one of Finland's two ​nuclear plants, its operator Fortum (FORTUM.HE) said separately.

Nuclear power, as a source of large amounts of low-carbon ​energy, is one of the attractions Finland offers as companies including Microsoft (MSFT.O) and TikTok ⁠owner ByteDance as well as Google seek sites for data centres while containing energy costs and meeting climate goals.

"This ​is Google's first nuclear energy deal outside of the United States, and we think it's a really important ​cornerstone to everything that we are doing here," the U.S. company's Chief Investment Officer Ruth Porat told reporters in Helsinki.

Fortum and Google will also explore the development of new nuclear and renewable energy in Finland, the companies said.

Fortum's share price rose 10% by ​0825 GMT, outperforming a 1.4% increase in the Helsinki benchmark stock index.

BIGGEST DEAL SO FAR IN EUROPE
Alphabet this ​year increased its global investment to between $195 billion and $205 billion as it seeks to capture growing computing demand. Google said the ‌AI investment ⁠deal in Finland is the biggest yet in Europe.

The investments will include data centres, electricity grid improvements and clean energy and battery projects driving services such as Gemini, Search, Maps and YouTube, Google said in a statement.

"The new digital infrastructure will serve as building blocks for Finnish and broader European digital readiness, innovation, and AI ​development," the company said.

The investment, ​to be undertaken in ⁠2027 and 2028, will contribute some $3.6 billion to Finland's gross domestic product during the construction phase, and is projected to support some 7,000 jobs annually once operational, Google ​said.

Finland's Prime Minister Petteri Orpo said in a statement Google's decision was "a clear ​testament to our ⁠strengths".

"The value of the data economy extends far beyond direct investment into spurring innovation, research, and development," he added.

In its statement utility Fortum said the long-term purchase deal provided economic certainty for a lifetime extension and upgrade of the ⁠Loviisa ​power plant through 2050. The plant is situated near Google's Hamina ​data centre.

Apart from copious amounts of low-emission power, Finland's cold climate lowers costs because it reduces the amount of energy needed to cope ​with the heat produced by data centres.

($1 = 0.8603 euros)

For the first time in well over half a century, the trillion-dollar conglomerate built by Warren Buffett, Berkshire Hathaway (BRKA -0.20%)(BRKB -0.04%), entered the year in uncharted territory. The Oracle of Omaha's well-telegraphed retirement as CEO on Dec. 31 meant his understudy, Greg Abel, would take the reins and oversee Berkshire's $360 billion investment portfolio.

Abel didn't waste much time making his presence felt. During the first quarter, he jettisoned 16 stocks from the portfolio and more than tripled Berkshire's stake in Google parent Alphabet (GOOGL -0.03%)(GOOG +0.02%). During the June-ended quarter, Abel oversaw an additional $17 billion in Alphabet stock purchases, making it his company's No. 3 investment holding.

Warren Buffett retired as Berkshire's CEO on Dec. 31. Image source: The Motley Fool.

But Alphabet isn't the company Warren Buffett or Greg Abel has sunk their teeth into deepest. It's not iPhone maker Apple (AAPL -1.17%), either. Collectively, Berkshire's bosses have spent more than $82 billion buying a stock that's rallied more than 6,000,000%!

It's Abel's turn to pile into the Oracle of Omaha's favorite stockTypically, Berkshire Hathaway's quarterly Form 13F filing is highly anticipated by investors. A 13F provides a snapshot of which stocks Wall Street's savviest money managers purchased and sold in the latest quarter.

However, what's interesting about the stock Buffett and Abel have spent more than $82 billion buying is that you won't find it in Berkshire's quarterly 13Fs. Rather, you'll need to peruse the company's quarterly operating results. On the final page before the executive certifications, you'll find detailed buying activity of the stock Buffett held nearest and dearest to his heart...Berkshire Hathaway.

BERKSHIRE IS BUYING STOCKS AGAIN FOR THE FIRST TIME SINCE 2022:

- Bought $25B of stock, sold $3.7B

- Bought Taylor Morrison Home for $6.8B

- Invested $10B in Alphabet $GOOGL during Q2, now a top 5 holding

- Even bought $4.5B of their own stock back

berkshire’s back

— amit (@amitisinvesting) August 8, 2026 Prior to mid-July 2018, Buffett could only repurchase his company's stock if shares fell to or below 120% of its book value. With shares not retracing to this mark, the Oracle of Omaha didn't spend a dime on share buybacks.

On July 17, 2018, Berkshire's board amended the buyback rules to give Buffett and now-late right-hand man Charlie Munger more freedom to execute share repurchases. The new rules allowed for unlimited buybacks as long as Berkshire had at least $30 billion in combined cash, cash equivalents, and U.S. Treasuries on its balance sheet, and Buffett perceived shares to be intrinsically cheap.

For 24 consecutive quarters (July 2018-June 2024), Berkshire's chief investor bought back his company's stock totaling around $78 billion.

Following a 21-month hiatus (June 2024-February 2026) in which no capital was allocated to buybacks, Abel has picked up where his predecessor left off. After repurchasing $234 million worth of Berkshire Hathaway stock in March, Abel green-lit $4.53 billion in buybacks in the June-ended quarter.

Since mid-July 2018, more than $82 billion has been spent to retire nearly 13% of the company's outstanding shares.

BRK.A Shares Outstanding (Quarterly) data by YCharts

The beauty of stock buybacks is twofold. First, they incentivize long-term investing. As Berkshire's share count declines over time, existing investors become incrementally larger stakeholders. Since Berkshire doesn't pay a dividend, buybacks are a logical way to reward its long-term shareholders.

Secondly, a steady diet of share buybacks by companies (e.g., Berkshire Hathaway) with neutral or growing net income can increase earnings per share and make them more fundamentally attractive to value-seeking investors.

As long as Berkshire Hathaway's shares remain below a 50% premium to book value, Abel will likely be a buyer of the stock Warren Buffett holds nearest and dearest to his heart.

Sergey Brin launched Google from a garage nearly three decades ago. Lionel Hahn/Getty Images; BI

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Google's AI destiny is being cooked up in a California kitchen.

On the second floor of Gradient Canopy, a tent-like structure that rises east of Google's Mountain View headquarters, is a microkitchen filled with many of the typical fixings: coffee beans, grinders, an espresso machine, a fridge. Less typical is the U-shaped formation of desks, used by Google cofounder Sergey Brin and a handful of mission-critical leaders who are steering Google through an AI race it can't afford to lose.

Google CEO Sundar Pichai visits the break-turned-war-room several times a week. Employees from other parts of the building sometimes saunter in for an extended snack break, hoping to overhear gossip that could reveal Google's next big move. There are whispers that cofounder Larry Page has been spotted there.

This unlikely nerve center has gained more influence in the weeks since Google shook up its AI leadership.

Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis, who was helping steer the company's AI efforts from London, relinquished his title and became Alphabet's chief scientist. Koray Kavukcuoglu, who moved from London to the US last year and now sits alongside Brin in the microkitchen, was appointed SVP of Google DeepMind, effectively replacing Hassabis. Jeff Dean, Google's longtime chief scientist, left the company after 27 years.

Brin's role in the new power structure went unmentioned.

However, the man who helped launch Google from a garage nearly three decades ago has become increasingly influential over Gemini, eight current and former employees told Business Insider, in part thanks to his unique ability to pull resources for critical work and cut through the tech giant's bureaucracy. The latest changes at the top, some of them said, could give Brin even more sway over Gemini.

It's a role seen by some inside Google as necessary after the 2023 merger of the company's two central AI labs led to friction over the direction of Gemini that slowed progress and prompted a stream of departures. Some of Mountain View's leaders became frustrated with Hassabis and other researchers in London, believing they weren't as pragmatic about making Gemini more competitive to rivals, two people familiar with the matter said.

Up against the corporate machinery of Google, the microkitchen has acted as something of a startup inside the larger company, allowing Brin, Kavukcuoglu, and other leaders to make decisions faster. "The promise of the kitchen is that it can help you cut through the politics," said one former employee familiar with the setup.

Many of Google's top AI researchers work in the Gradient Canopy building.  Jane Tyska/Bay Area News Group Such decisions are more crucial than ever. Google has fallen behind the frontier, which is putting more pressure on it to make its next model, Gemini 4, a blockbuster event. The company has lost top talent in recent months, including star computer scientists John Jumper and Noam Shazeer. Against this backdrop, Brin has urged employees to double their efforts on Gemini.

"Demis is obviously very talented, but he's moving farther away, not closer, to the operational part. This glimmer of hope is this notion that Sergey will get more involved," said Gil Luria, head of technology research at the investment bank D.A. Davidson. "They need a big change that will cut through that bureaucracy."

Google declined to comment on this story, and declined to make Brin and other leaders available for interviews.

Letting Brin cookBrin's position is highly unusual.

He no longer holds an executive title at Google, yet he and Page have decisive influence over the company's board due to a special controlling stock.

After he and Page stepped back from running Alphabet in 2019, Brin spent his time building airships, partying at Burning Man, and writing about physics. When ChatGPT launched in late 2022, and Google was suddenly playing catch-up, Brin said the temptation to return to the trenches was just too much. "As a computer scientist I've never seen anything as exciting as all of the AI progress that's happened in the last few years," he said during the All-In Summit in Los Angeles in 2024.

Brin's unique perch inside Google makes him a powerful ally for any Googler who wants to accrue more support for their project or idea. Getting access to Google's chips, even for the Gemini team, can be difficult. The official route is to submit a formal document and get buy-in from higher-ups. Another route is to strike a deal with a different team inside Google to use their chips in exchange for, say, building Gemini features for their products, two people familiar with such arrangements said.

The other, less official route is to go to Brin.

"Koray has more explicit power in the hierarchy, but Sergey is the founder of Google," said a former senior employee. "He's able to cut through bureaucracy and clear red tape in a way no one else can." People who have worked at Google DeepMind said Kavukcuoglu and Brin have a good rapport, and that when Brin wants something done, he will often do it through Kavukcuoglu. However, Brin usually gets his way, three people said.

Koray Kavukcuoglu became SVP of Google DeepMind in the August reshuffle.  Lester Cohen/Getty Images for Breakthrough Prize Over the past two years, the microkitchen's gravitational pull has grown stronger. Kavukcuoglu moved from London to Mountain View last year and now sits close to Brin. Sebastian Borgeaud, a research engineer, also moved across the Atlantic last year and was appointed to lead work on improving Gemini's coding abilities, two people familiar with the move said. A huddle of desks was set up for the coding strike team inside the microkitchen, close to Brin and Kavukcuoglu, a person familiar with the matter said.

"Sergey wants to run Gemini like a startup," said a former employee with direct knowledge of the arrangement. "If you want to be part of the startup, you have to be in the microkitchen."

Emanuel Taropa, a Google fellow and a legendary name in the AI research community, often sits in the kitchen, two people said. So does Enrique Piqueras, a senior research engineer on Gemini, who insiders described as an especially close ally of Brin's. Another oft-spotted face in the kitchen is Rahul Arya, a physics Olympiad who has played a central role in improving Google's AI chips. Insiders say that Google has made a concerted effort not to publicize some of its most important stars for fear of them being poached.

If you can't handle the heatBrin has largely involved himself in the technical aspects of Gemini, weighing in on discussions about model sizes, release windows, and paths to artificial general intelligence, according to current and former employees. He also got involved in some internal disagreements last year over how Gemini should be integrated into Google products, two people said.

One idea Brin pushed earlier this year was to use software to monitor some Google employees as they coded, believing it could be a useful reinforcement learning technique to improve Gemini's coding abilities, a person familiar with the project said.

At times, Brin has made calls that have frustrated some staff. In 2025, Dean, Google's now-former chief scientist, was leading efforts to build a chip that would embed a version of the Gemini model architecture directly onto the silicon, a project internally codenamed Frozen. The project was unpopular among some Gemini leaders, two former employees said. Brin made the call to cut the project — a decision that frustrated Dean, who told some colleagues around that time he was considering leaving the company, said one of the people who heard the remarks.

The project was later revived as Frozen v2; however, some of its resources were stripped away from it earlier this year, the person added. Dean left Google in August to launch his own startup. He declined to comment on this story.

Jeff Dean left Google in August after 27 years to launch his own startup.  Bloomberg/Getty Images Some employees bristled at a post Brin made in an internal Google DeepMind work channel in 2025, stating that working about 60 hours a week is the "sweet spot" for productivity, which was first reported by The New York Times. One former manager said that they told their employees to ignore Brin's memo.

Earlier this year, during a Q&A session at San Francisco's AGI House, Brin was asked how he was splitting his responsibilities with Kavukcuoglu and Hassabis. Brin said he worked closely with Kavukcuoglu and would often "poke and prod" the teams when he was unhappy with their direction, describing himself as "sometimes a little bit disruptive."

"I'll be honest, I'm a little bit of a rabble-rouser," he said.

Brain trustWhen Google announced in 2023 that it would combine DeepMind with its core Brain AI team, it capped a near-decade journey for Hassabis. Since selling DeepMind to Google in 2014, the Nobel laureate had fought to keep his lab independent, determined to pursue research free of Google's bureaucracy and untethered from products he considered irrelevant to his north star: building artificial general intelligence.

The 2023 merger was evidence to some inside DeepMind that any hopes of exercising independence under Google were misplaced. It was also around this time that Brin began showing up to work on Gemini. While Google said nothing publicly about Brin's return, there were clues. A March 2023 post on LinkedIn showed Luxembourg Deputy Prime Minister Xavier Bettel meeting Pichai, Google's global affairs president Kent Walker, and — wearing sweatpants — Brin.

Google was in wartime mode, but there was also a battle brewing within. Brain and DeepMind had different cultures, three people who worked there at the time said. Brain typically worked more closely on improving Google's products, and teams in DeepMind had focused more on longer-term research that often didn't have near-term commercial viability. "There was tension in the DNA of what DeepMind wanted to be," said a former employee. "Do they want to be a 10-year research bet working on things that make humanity incredible, or are they going to win this 3-6 month horizon race between the labs?"

Demis Hassabis is now Alphabet's chief scientist.  Karl Mondon / AFP via Getty Images In 2023, Kavukcuoglu chose to build Gemini using some of the people and infrastructure behind Chinchilla, a prior language model developed by the London DeepMind team, rather than on Google's PaLM 2. The decision was unpopular with some researchers in Mountain View, who saw it as favoritism toward the London group, two people said.

After Brin returned to the trenches in 2023, he began working in the microkitchen. Taropa, the Google fellow, was also a core founding member of the kitchen office. Over time, more desks were added, and the space became the de facto command center, often referred to by staff as "Sergey's microkitchen." At one point, an overflow space was added because many employees wanted to be closer to what had quickly become the power center of Gemini.

'AGI-pilled'Brin has spent less time in the kitchen in recent months, sometimes showing up on alternating weeks, according to two people who have seen him there. Ahead of a possible new billionaire's tax, the Google cofounder moved some of his personal assets out of California last December and purchased homes in Florida and Nevada.

The measure, if it passes on a November ballot, would impose a one-time tax on California residents with a net worth exceeding $1 billion. Brin, who has mounted a large-scale opposition effort against the tax, could be liable to pay $14 billion if he were considered a resident.

Ahead of the recent leadership shuffle, Brin appeared frustrated with the pace at which Google is moving on Gemini and has pushed employees for more focus on recursive self-improvement (RSI), the point where systems can improve themselves, current and former employees said. "He's very invested in RSI. He's very AGI-pilled," said one former employee. Reuters previously reported on some of Brin's remarks around RSI.

Sergey Brin and Larry Page launched Google out of a suburban Silicon Valley garage in 1998.  JOKER/Martin Magunia/ullstein bild via Getty Images Insiders described the August reorg as a win for the more technical side of the company and the further erosion of DeepMind's independence, underscoring the commercial reality of the AI race. In recent weeks, the company has shown signs of positive progress. It recently rehired Barret Zoph, the Thinking Machines Labs cofounder, in what some insiders said could be a big win for Google. The company has said its latest Gemini model shows "significant" improvements in coding.

Will it be enough? Google is still bleeding talent. The AI coding software market has fast become crowded, which could make it harder for Google to break in meaningfully, said Luria, the analyst. What Google needs, he said, is a major breakthrough that will vault its models to the state of the art. "Short of that, everything is tactical, and they'll continue to need to catch up," he said.

The September release of ChatGPT's Astra model appears to have pushed the frontier forward again, and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has suggested even smarter models are waiting in the wings.

Google needs momentum, and with Brin more involved than ever, some employees are hopeful it will find it. From a garage to a kitchen, Google's most consequential work has a habit of happening in unlikely rooms.

Have something to share? Contact this reporter via email at [email protected] or Signal at 628-228-1836.

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Hugh is a senior correspondent at Business Insider where he writes about Google, tech, and wealth. His work has been cited by The New York Times, Bloomberg, Reuters, The Wall Street Journal, and other outlets.Get an alert whenever I publish a story.Got a tip? You can reach him using the secure messaging app Signal (hughlangley.01) or email ([email protected]). We can keep sources anonymous.

AWS just posted its fastest growth in 18 quarters, yet Amazon shares are lagging the S&P 500 and sliding further. Here is why that disconnect could set up one of the boldest stock plays of the decade.

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Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN | AMZN Price Prediction) just posted its fastest AWS growth in 18 quarters, yet the stock is up only 10.88% year to date, trailing the S&P 500’s 12.53%.

That’s a strange result for a business where AWS is now running at a $169 billion annualized run rate and CEO Andy Jassy is publicly guiding investors toward a potential trillion dollar annual revenue business for AWS alone. Which brings me to the question I want to answer: can Amazon shares realistically hit $500 by 2030?

Why Amazon Shares Are Stuck Despite a Booming AWS Shares have gone the wrong way lately. AMZN is down 3.94% over the past week and 6.13% over the past month, with a one-year return of just 8.6% against the S&P’s 18.22%.

The disconnect is capex. Amazon spent $54.208 billion in a single quarter, plans roughly $200 billion in 2026, and trailing free cash flow flipped to negative $7.6 billion. Q3 guidance also implies growth decelerates to 9% to 12%. Add a beta of 1.44, and you get exactly what we’re seeing: a nervous market punishing near-term cash burn even while the demand story gets bigger.

Wall Street Sees 27% Upside. Our Model Says 38% The Street is heavily bullish. The consensus target sits at $328.17, with 15 Strong Buys, 44 Buys, 2 Holds, and zero Sells. Our own model goes further, projecting a one-year base case of $356.16, an upside of 37.77%, with a bull case at $407.01 and confidence rated high (0.9). I think the consensus is too conservative.

With 97% of analysts bullish and earnings growth contributing meaningfully to our 247Factor via strong earnings acceleration, the setup argues for multiple expansion once capex intensity peaks. Analysts often lag the pivot from “investment mode” to “harvest mode.” That’s the window Amazon is walking into.

Charting a Path to $500 Per Share by 2030 Reaching $500 from today’s price of $258.51 would require a gain of 93.4%. With forward EPS of $14.42, a price of $500 implies a forward P/E of 35x. Our base case of $356.16 already implies 21x, meaning the bold target requires 14x of additional multiple expansion.

That is a real stretch, but it is achievable if EPS compounds meaningfully by 2030 and the market rewards the AWS earnings mix. The 247Factor adjustment of 1.097 already reflects strong analyst consensus and earnings acceleration.

Jassy told investors AWS “added over $4.6 billion in revenue quarter over quarter” with a $496 billion backlog, and that the chips business now has an annual revenue run rate of over $25 billion, growing triple-digit percentages year over year.

Ads at $19.809 billion quarterly (up 26%) is the profit accelerant Wall Street still underestimates. The primary risk is that AI capex overshoots demand and depresses returns on invested capital for years.

Where Amazon Trades Today vs Its Earnings Power At $258.51 against forward EPS of $14.42, Amazon trades at roughly 18x forward earnings. That looks reasonable for a business compounding AWS at 37% and ads at 26%.

Shares sit between a 52-week low of $196 and a high of $287.20, and the 10-year return of 548.88% more than doubles the S&P’s 250.34%. That long-term track record is exactly what supports paying up for the earnings power still building underneath the capex wave.

Is $500 Realistic? Here’s My Take Reaching $500 by 2030 requires a 93.4% gain from here. My verdict: a stretch, but a credible one.

Three things need to go right. AWS has to keep compounding above 30% into 2027 as capacity contracted for 2027 and 2028 comes online. Free cash flow has to inflect sharply once data-center spend normalizes. And advertising plus custom silicon need to keep pushing operating margin higher.

The derailer would be AI demand slowing before that $200 billion 2026 capex program earns its return. Returns at this level shouldn’t be expected every year, but we’ve outlined the blueprint for how Amazon could reach $500 in 2030.

Contact [email protected] for any questions or corrections.

The multigeneration partnership expands AWS's silicon bench, but disclosed economics stop at bandwidth--not revenue, pricing or deployment dates. Summary

AWS gains another chip designer while Qualcomm becomes a larger cloud customer.

Amazon AMZN, the e-commerce and cloud-computing powerhouse, expanded its custom-chip ambitions Tuesday by bringing Qualcomm into a multigeneration partnership. The alliance targets AI inference silicon and optical networking capable of reaching 1.6 terabits per second. Amazon shares fell approximately 1.3% to $255.13 in early trading.

AWS delivered $42.2 billion in second-quarter revenue, up 37%, while operating income reached $16.6 billion. Amazon said both its chip franchise and broader AI business had crossed annual revenue run rates of $25 billion. Qualcomm will deepen the relationship from both directions, helping design Amazon hardware while using more AWS infrastructure and AI services to develop its own semiconductors.

The real prize is cheaper inference, not another headline-grabbing chip specification. AWS posted an operating margin of roughly 39.3%, so every efficiency gain could protect the profit engine financing Amazon's AI buildout. The chart shows the stock trading only 2.96% above its $247.80 GF Value, leaving limited valuation cushion as infrastructure spending keeps trailing free cash flow negative. Qualcomm may strengthen Amazon's chip arsenal and expand its customer base, but the companies disclosed no pricing, purchase commitments or deployment timetable.

Disclosures I/we have no positions in any stocks mentioned, and have no plans to buy any new positions in the stocks mentioned within the next 72 hours.

Click for the complete disclosure

Amazon was sued on Tuesday in a proposed nationwide class action accusing the retailer of systematically discriminating against thousands of pregnant employees, including by firing some it claimed took too much time off.

According to a complaint filed by four former warehouse employees, Amazon routinely violates federal and New York worker-protection laws by denying pregnant workers basic accommodations such as chairs, bathroom and water breaks, and time off for prenatal appointments.

The complaint said Amazon threatens and regularly fires pregnant employees who miss too much work, and illegally demands medical documentation from those seeking accommodations. It said these actions violate the federal Pregnant Workers Fairness Act and New York labor law.

According to a complaint filed by four former warehouse employees, Amazon routinely violates federal and New York worker-protection laws by denying pregnant workers basic accommodations such as chairs, bathroom and water breaks, and time off for prenatal appointments. Getty Images “Amazon is one of this country’s largest employers, [and] it is no surprise that many of its workers become pregnant,” according to the complaint filed in the Brooklyn, New York, federal court. “Yet Amazon violates the law at every turn.”

Kelly Nantel, an Amazon spokesperson, said the retailer provides pregnancy-related accommodations to tens of thousands of employees annually, and approved more than 99.9% of requests in the last year. “Ensuring the health and well-being of our employees is one of our greatest responsibilities,” she said.

The lawsuit seeks lost pay and benefits, punitive damages, and an injunction against discrimination against pregnant employees.

Amazon has long faced complaints in court about its treatment of employees, including those seeking to unionize.

The Seattle-based retailer is the second-largest US private employer, trailing Walmart, with 1.58 million full-time and part-time employees at the end of 2025. AP Photo/Michael Sohn The Seattle-based retailer is the second-largest US private employer, trailing Walmart, with 1.58 million full-time and part-time employees at the end of 2025.

Hospitalization led to dismissal, lawsuit says Tuesday’s lawsuit was filed by A Better Balance, a nonprofit that advocates for workers’ rights.

It came 11 months after New Jersey sued Amazon, accusing it of widespread discrimination against warehouse employees who had disabilities or were pregnant. New York filed a similar case in 2022.

Amazon has long faced complaints in court about its treatment of employees, including those seeking to unionize. USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect One plaintiff, Willamina Barclay, said Amazon gave her a termination warning on June 17, 2025, one day after she was taken in a wheelchair out of its Rochester, NY, warehouse and hospitalized with a pregnancy-related emergency.

Barclay said she was suffering severe abdominal pain from lifting heavy objects, but Amazon claimed the hospital visit pushed her over her limit for unpaid time off, and docked her because she “worked partially that day.”

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She was fired five days later, the complaint said.

Nantel said the four plaintiffs’ accounts “contain inaccuracies and omit important details.”

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission plans in November to propose changes to regulations underlying the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act.

That agency has aligned itself with President Trump’s policies, and EEOC Chair Andrea Lucas said in 2024 that the regulations for pregnant employees are too broad.

The EEOC did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The office of New Jersey Attorney General Jennifer Davenport, whose predecessor filed that state’s lawsuit, did not immediately respond to similar requests.

It's hard to remember that Amazon (AMZN -0.60%) started as an online bookseller in 1994. Thanks to co-founder and then-CEO Jeff Bezos' vision, it quickly grew to sell virtually everything imaginable online. Today, it has added physical stores, devices, a streaming service, advertising services, and a cloud-computing platform.

Bezos remains Amazon's largest shareholder, which should give investors confidence. Still, looking closer at the holdings and the company, should you follow his lead and make the stock part of your core long-term holdings?

Jeff Bezos, Amazon executive chairman. Image source: Amazon.com

The co-founder retains a large ownership Bezos' vast fortune has been estimated at $280 billion. His Amazon shares make up the vast majority of his net worth.

The founder owned 950.4 million shares at the end of February, according to Amazon's annual proxy filing. That works out to a $245.7 billion value for his stake, based on the current share price.

Aside from accounting for the largest portion of his net worth, Bezos owned 8.8% of Amazon's outstanding shares, as of the end of February. Vanguard Group and BlackRock are the next-largest shareholders, at 7.2% and 5.9%, respectively.

Should you follow suit? While not running the day-to-day operations as CEO, Bezos clearly believes in the company's future. After all, what better way to express confidence than with your wallet? He also retains a role with Amazon as executive chair.

While the shares have handsomely rewarded shareholders over the years, they have trailed the S&P 500 (^GSPC -0.58%) this year. Year to date, through Sept. 4, Amazon's stock gained 12%, while the index, including dividends, returned 13.7%.

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However, Amazon's long-term future looks bright. Some investors have been put off by management's decision to invest heavily, particularly in areas like data centers, to meet growing demand for generative artificial intelligence. However, given the vast growth potential and Amazon's No. 1 market position in cloud computing via its Amazon Web Services (AWS) business, it looks like an astute investment.

AWS is already growing quickly, with a 36.8% year-over-year gain in second-quarter sales to $42.2 billion. It's also the company's largest profit generator, accounting for 60.5% of operating income.

Looking at the entire company, Amazon's second-quarter sales grew 20% year over year to $200.6 billion. Operating income increased by more than 43% to $27.5 billion.

You shouldn't invest solely based on someone's holdings, even someone as astute as Bezos. However, given management's commitment to long-term growth and patient investing, Amazon belongs in your portfolio. It may not make you a billionaire, but it should allow you to grow your wealth over time.

Amazon (AMZN.O) started selling sterling bonds for the first time on Wednesday, according to the banks managing the deal, as hyperscalers rush to diversify ​their funding sources to finance the AI boom.

The deal is the latest ‌example of how hyperscalers are increasingly selling bonds across markets outside of the U.S. this year, from euros to Swiss francs and the yen, as they make sure they can raise capital ​wherever they can, given their huge funding needs.

They have already ​issued more than $200 billion of debt this year, more than doubling ⁠from the whole of 2025, according to LSEG data.

Initial price guidance ​on the Amazon deal was set at around 70 basis points over British government ​bonds on a three-year bond, around 90 basis points over for a six-year bond, around 105 basis points over for a 12-year bond and around 110 basis points over for a ​19-year bond, according to a memo sent by three of the banks ​seen by Reuters.

The deal will price later on Wednesday, the memo said.

The pound is the ‌latest ⁠currency Amazon has added to its funding programme after tapping the euro and Swiss franc bond markets.

The European Central Bank warned earlier in September that hyperscalers' push into the euro zone bond market could potentially crowd out other borrowers ​and push up ​their financing costs.

⁠Google-parent Alphabet (GOOGL.O), which has led the way in selling non-U.S. dollar bonds, was the first hyperscaler to tap the sterling ​market in February, when it raised £5.5 billion from a five-part deal, ​including a ⁠rare 100-year bond. It has also raised Japanese yen, Canadian and Australian dollar debt this year.

It is Amazon's first bond sale since July, according to LSEG ⁠data, ​when it received weaker demand than in the past ​for a $25 billion offering, in one of several signs that the heavy pace of hyperscaler borrowing started ​to test the limits of investor demand.

BTC Capital Management Inc. grew its holdings in Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT – Free Report) by 14.1% in the second quarter, according to the company in its most recent 13F filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The institutional investor owned 172,761 shares of the software giant’s stock after purchasing an additional 21,395 shares during the period. Microsoft comprises about 3.9% of BTC Capital Management Inc.’s investment portfolio, making the stock its 6th biggest holding. BTC Capital Management Inc.’s holdings in Microsoft were worth $64,512,000 at the end of the most recent quarter.

Several other hedge funds have also recently modified their holdings of the business. WFA Asset Management Corp increased its stake in Microsoft by 27.0% in the 1st quarter. WFA Asset Management Corp now owns 1,016 shares of the software giant’s stock worth $427,000 after acquiring an additional 216 shares during the last quarter. Ironwood Wealth Management LLC. grew its holdings in shares of Microsoft by 0.3% in the second quarter. Ironwood Wealth Management LLC. now owns 12,658 shares of the software giant’s stock valued at $5,658,000 after purchasing an additional 38 shares in the last quarter. Discipline Wealth Solutions LLC increased its position in Microsoft by 410.4% in the third quarter. Discipline Wealth Solutions LLC now owns 2,659 shares of the software giant’s stock worth $1,144,000 after purchasing an additional 2,138 shares during the last quarter. Wealth Group Ltd. grew its stake in shares of Microsoft by 1.2% in the 4th quarter. Wealth Group Ltd. now owns 2,374 shares of the software giant’s stock worth $1,000,000 after buying an additional 28 shares in the last quarter. Finally, Eagle Capital Management LLC increased its holdings in shares of Microsoft by 0.4% in the 4th quarter. Eagle Capital Management LLC now owns 23,097 shares of the software giant’s stock worth $9,735,000 after buying an additional 96 shares during the last quarter. Hedge funds and other institutional investors own 71.13% of the company’s stock.

Insider Buying and Selling at Microsoft In related news, EVP Takeshi Numoto sold 4,810 shares of the company’s stock in a transaction dated Tuesday, August 4th. The shares were sold at an average price of $496.48, for a total value of $2,388,068.80. Following the completion of the sale, the executive vice president directly owned 42,677 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $21,188,276.96. This represents a 10.13% decrease in their ownership of the stock. The transaction was disclosed in a legal filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available through the SEC website. Also, CEO Judson Althoff sold 10,000 shares of the stock in a transaction that occurred on Wednesday, August 5th. The shares were sold at an average price of $487.89, for a total transaction of $4,878,900.00. Following the transaction, the chief executive officer owned 100,447 shares in the company, valued at approximately $49,007,086.83. This represents a 9.05% decrease in their ownership of the stock. The disclosure for this sale is available in the SEC filing. Insiders sold a total of 105,835 shares of company stock valued at $52,468,575 in the last ninety days. Corporate insiders own 0.03% of the company’s stock.

Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades A number of brokerages have issued reports on MSFT. Barclays decreased their price objective on Microsoft from $545.00 to $512.00 and set an “overweight” rating on the stock in a research report on Thursday, July 30th. DA Davidson restated a “buy” rating and set a $550.00 price target on shares of Microsoft in a report on Thursday, July 30th. Citigroup restated a “market outperform” rating on shares of Microsoft in a research report on Monday, August 31st. Morgan Stanley reaffirmed an “overweight” rating on shares of Microsoft in a research note on Thursday, July 30th. Finally, Stifel Nicolaus boosted their price objective on shares of Microsoft from $450.00 to $530.00 and gave the company a “hold” rating in a research report on Friday. Forty-two equities research analysts have rated the stock with a Buy rating and five have assigned a Hold rating to the company’s stock. According to MarketBeat, Microsoft presently has an average rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average price target of $564.27. Read Our Latest Research Report on Microsoft

Microsoft Stock Performance MSFT stock opened at $499.70 on Tuesday. Microsoft Corporation has a twelve month low of $349.20 and a twelve month high of $553.72. The firm has a market cap of $3.71 trillion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 27.82, a PEG ratio of 1.61 and a beta of 1.11. The business’s fifty day simple moving average is $447.15 and its two-hundred day simple moving average is $416.63. The company has a quick ratio of 1.22, a current ratio of 1.23 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.07.

Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT – Get Free Report) last issued its earnings results on Wednesday, July 29th. The software giant reported $4.74 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, beating analysts’ consensus estimates of $4.24 by $0.50. Microsoft had a net margin of 40.31% and a return on equity of 31.98%. The firm had revenue of $90.01 billion during the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $87.62 billion. During the same period in the previous year, the firm earned $3.65 earnings per share. The business’s revenue was up 17.7% on a year-over-year basis. Analysts predict that Microsoft Corporation will post 19.59 earnings per share for the current year.

Microsoft Announces Dividend The company also recently disclosed a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Thursday, September 10th. Shareholders of record on Thursday, August 20th will be issued a dividend of $0.91 per share. This represents a $3.64 annualized dividend and a yield of 0.7%. The ex-dividend date is Thursday, August 20th. Microsoft’s dividend payout ratio (DPR) is presently 20.27%.

Trending Headlines about Microsoft Here are the key news stories impacting Microsoft this week:

Positive Sentiment: Microsoft’s Azure business reportedly crossed a significant revenue milestone, while its large backlog points to continued demand for cloud and AI services. This is strengthening the long-term bull case and fueling speculation that the stock could approach $600. Microsoft Stock Is Building a Trillion-Dollar AI Opportunity Positive Sentiment: Microsoft and Nvidia are described as major beneficiaries of a potential $7 trillion AI infrastructure buildout. Rising data-center construction and demand for computing capacity could support sustained growth across Azure, software, and AI products. Nvidia, Microsoft at Center of $7 Trillion AI Boom Positive Sentiment: Investment commentary continues to favor Microsoft as a long-term holding because of its diversified software ecosystem, recurring revenue, cloud position, and favorable earnings outlook. Its latest reported quarter also showed revenue growth and earnings well above expectations. Why Microsoft Is a Top Stock for the Long-Term Positive Sentiment: Microsoft’s partnerships and investments in Gulf data-center infrastructure highlight its efforts to expand global AI capacity. Separately, company representatives said AI could create new employment opportunities rather than only eliminate jobs, supporting broader adoption narratives. Microsoft and Schneider Electric Bet Big on the Gulf Neutral Sentiment: Analysts are focused on a key cash-flow line item, likely reflecting the impact of elevated AI-related capital expenditures. Strong investment may expand future growth but could constrain free cash flow and delay a breakout to a new high. Microsoft Is Close to a New All-Time High Negative Sentiment: Microsoft’s next-generation Xbox, Project Helix, could face a pricing challenge if advanced hardware pushes the console toward $1,000. A high price could limit adoption and pressure the gaming business, although Microsoft is considering affordability measures. Microsoft Has a $1,000 Problem With Its Next Xbox Negative Sentiment: Recent Outlook and Exchange Online outages, alongside a separate ChatGPT Work disruption, raise concerns about reliability for Microsoft’s productivity and cloud services. The incidents have not materially undermined reported results but remain a reputational and retention risk. Microsoft’s Outlook and OpenAI’s ChatGPT Work Both Broke the Same Day Microsoft Profile (Free Report)

Microsoft Corporation is a global technology company headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Founded in 1975 by Bill Gates and Paul Allen, Microsoft develops, licenses and supports a broad range of software products, services and devices for consumers, enterprises and governments worldwide. Its operations span personal computing, productivity software, cloud infrastructure, enterprise applications, developer tools and gaming.

Microsoft’s product portfolio includes the Windows operating system and the Microsoft 365 suite of productivity and collaboration tools (Office apps, Outlook, Teams).

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