Business news update for Friday, August 29th
Business news update for: Thursday, August 28th
Business news updates for: Wednesday, August 27th
Business news update for Tuesday, August 26th
Business news update for Monday: August 25th
Business news update for Friday, August 22nd
Business news update for Thursday, August 21st
Business news update for Wednesday, August 20th
Business news update for Tuesday, August 19th
Business news update for Monday, August 18th
Business news update for Thursday, August 14th
Daily business news update: Wednesday, Aug 13th
Daily business news update for Tuesday, August 12th
Business news update for Monday, August 11th
capitalcurrentsdaily.substack.com
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Let's run through some headlines. Starting with Tesla. Tesla announced that they're pulling the plug on its Dojo supercomputer program, which is a project that Elon Musk once hyped as the crown jewel of Tesla's AI ambitions. The Dojo supercomputer was Tesla's own custom-built computer for training AI. It was designed from the ground up, made specifically to process the massive amounts of video data from Tesla's cars. That data helped improve autopilot, full self-driving, and even the Optimus humanoid robot.
Morgan Stanley saw this as a key competitive advantage for Tesla, predicting that it would add \$500 billion to Tesla's market cap. But now that's all over. The Dojo team is being disbanded, and the guy who was leading the team, Peter Bannon, is leaving Tesla. The rest of the crew is getting reassigned. You know, before all this was even happening, the Dojo team was losing engineers. About 20 Dojo engineers recently left Tesla to start their own AI company called Density AI.
Now let's stick with the AI theme and talk about OpenAI, because they launched their latest AI model on Friday called GPT-5.
OpenAI is trying to improve their user experience by getting rid of all the old models in the dropdown menu and letting GPT-5 decide which model to use based on the prompt.
There's a lot of pressure on OpenAI these days to continue to innovate and have the leading edge model. Competition is heating up. Gemini continues to put up impressive benchmarks. Claude has a loyal fan base, especially amongst coders. Grok is showing impressive capabilities. And then you have Meta, which is on a hiring spree, poaching OpenAI engineers with massive paychecks, so I'm sure they're cooking up something too. But as of right now, I think the crown still belongs to OpenAI.
They have the most users and the most hype. ChatGPT is on track to hit 700 million weekly active users and process 3 billion messages a day. And that kind of dominance is pushing up their valuation pretty quickly. Bloomberg reports that the company is in early talks for a stock sale that would let current and former employees cash out at a valuation of about \$500 billion. What's crazy is the company was just valued at \$300 billion four months ago. And it was at \$157 billion last October.
Instacart shares are jumping this morning after the grocery delivery company reported that its profit growth nearly doubled in Q2 to \$116 million. Revenue also jumped 11% to \$914 million, beating analysts' expectations. Instacart makes money in two big ways. First is the fee it charges on grocery deliveries. And the second way is advertising revenue from brands promoting products on their app. Last quarter delivery fee revenues jumped 11%, which is a slowdown from a 17% growth a year ago. But their ad revenue was up 12%. And advertising is a highly profitable business model. So investors are pretty excited about the company and shares are up more than 9% this morning.
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Now Sweetgreen, on the other hand, is having a rough day. Shares are tanking after the salad chain company admitted that fewer people want to pay \$16 for a bowl of kale. The company slashed its 2025 sales outlook. They're now expecting revenues to drop between 4% to 6% this year versus the earlier forecast where they expected sales to be flat. Now just focusing on Q2, same store sales dropped by 8%, which is much worse than what Wall Street was expecting. But to be fair, Sweetgreen isn't the only food chain to blame the economy of slumping sales. Chipotle cut its forecast for same store sales after traffic declined for the second straight quarter. And then there's Kava, whose shares are down 20% in 2025 and down nearly 50% from its 52-week highs. It was down 60% year-to-date heading into earnings, and it's down another 25% this morning.
Business news update for Friday, August 8th
Daily business news for Thursday, August 7th.
Business news update for Tuesday, August 5th
capitalcurrentsdaily.substack.com
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In today's episode, I’ll tell you about Elon Musk's new pay package from Tesla, then let's go over Berkshire Hathaway's earnings results.
The markets are coming off their worst week of the summer with the S&P 500 and Nasdaq both dropping more than 2% last week. The main driver? The disappointing jobs report. Not only did that report show July’s jobs numbers were weak, but it also revised May and June’s numbers down, meaning the economy added just 35,000 jobs on average over the last three months—a sign the labor market is losing steam.
Now, looking ahead to this week, we’ve got a ton of big earnings on deck: Palantir, AMD, Uber, Airbnb, Disney, and more. It’s another packed week, and we might even see a couple of trade deals, with new tariff rates going into effect August 7th. We’ll stay on top of all that, so make sure you’re subscribed to the podcast!
Let’s run through some headlines, starting with Elon Musk. The Tesla board just approved a massive $29 billion pay package for Elon, aiming to keep him locked in and motivated. This deal includes 96 million shares that will only vest if Musk remains a key executive through 2027. It’s essentially a two-year, $29 billion deal, and a way for Tesla to make good on the $50 billion package from 2018 that was struck down by a Delaware court earlier this year. In a shareholder letter, Tesla’s board said this is the first step toward a long-term comp plan, which will go to vote at the November 6th annual meeting. This package could also gradually increase Elon’s voting power, which is currently around 13%. The board wants him focused on Tesla, not distracted by SpaceX or xAI, especially since Tesla’s core business is struggling—vehicle sales dropped 14% last quarter and revenue growth has flatlined. There have been rumors of a possible CEO switch, but for now, the board and investors still believe Musk is the guy to lead Tesla into its next chapter: full self-driving, robo-taxis, and humanoid robots.
Switching gears to Berkshire Hathaway: The Warren Buffett-led giant reported disappointing earnings with operating profits dropping 4% in Q2, dragged down by insurance underwriting losses. Other segments like railroads and energy were flat or only slightly up, but the biggest hit was a $3.8 billion write-down on their Kraft Heinz stake—a rare L for Buffett. Berkshire now values its 27% Kraft Heinz stake at just $8.4 billion, less than half of what it was worth in 2017.
Buffett also took a jab at Trump’s trade policy, warning that escalating tariffs could hurt most of Berkshire’s businesses and investments. The company was a net seller of stocks for the 11th straight quarter, unloading $3 billion worth of equities in Q2 and $4.5 billion in the first half of the year. And with Buffett set to step down as CEO at the end of 2025, the vibes are a bit shaky. The stock is down more than 3%.
That’s all the business headlines for now. Let’s look at some stocks:
Wayfair shares are popping after the company posted its strongest quarter since the pandemic—revenues grew 5% year over year in Q2. While that may sound low, it’s a big comeback for Wayfair. Last quarter, revenue growth was flat, and for 2024, sales dropped 1%. The company hasn’t posted a profit in years, but this Q2 they reported a surprise profit and the stock is up over 5% this morning.
On the flip side, Boeing’s stock is down after more than 3,000 workers in their defense unit went on strike in Missouri and Illinois, following the union’s rejection of a four-year labor contract. Boeing’s defense unit is about 30% of total revenue and produces key military products like the Apache helicopter, so this is another headache as they try to turn things around. This comes less than a year after thousands of Boeing employees went on strike in September 2024, a strike that didn’t end until November. Boeing stock is down around 2% this morning in response.
Business news update for Monday, Aug 4th
capitalcurrentsdaily.substack.com
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* Apple and Amazon earnings 🍎📦
* Tariffs go live for 80+ countries 🌍
* ESPN takes a stake in NFL Media 🏈
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In today's episode, we'll recap earnings from Apple and Amazon—lowkey, I’m getting tired of all these earnings. It’s been every episode last week. Then, I’ll tell you about a new deal update between ESPN and the NFL. I got a great show for you today. Let’s go.
Stocks continued to slide at market close on Friday, and the S\&P 500 dropped for the third day in a row, closing down 0.4%.
Also on Friday:
* The **tariff deadline expired**, and the new rates are now in effect (15% to 40% for 80+ countries).
* **China** is the exception with another 90-day extension.
* Countries not named in the order now face a **10% baseline tariff**.
* The **July jobs report** came in cold: just **73,000 jobs** added vs. 100k expected.
We got hit with a double whammy: inflation is heating up while job growth slows. Could be a rocky August.
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### 🍏 Apple Earnings
Apple posted a surprisingly strong quarter:
* Revenue jumped **10% to \$94B**, the fastest growth in 3 years.
* Profit came in over **\$23B**.
iPhone sales were up **13%**, possibly because buyers rushed in before tariffs hit. Even though Apple hasn’t raised prices yet, tariffs cost them **\$800M** in Q2 and are expected to reach **\$1.1B** in Q3.
Their **services business**—App Store, iCloud—grew **13% to \$27B**. Overall, a solid quarter. Apple shares rose nearly 2%.
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### 📦 Amazon Earnings
Amazon also beat on revenue and profits:
* Sales up **13% to \$167B**.
* But the stock dropped **7%** on weak profit guidance and AWS concerns.