Good news to anyone who hates Tesla’s door handles and lives in China. Due to a new Chinese safety rule that will require every vehicle sold in the country to have mechanically operable external and internal door handles, the door handles that Tesla is famous for are now effectively banned from the country.
Stocks climbed as the January ISM manufacturing index blew past analysts’ expectations, indicating manufacturing growth. All major US indexes rose, while gold and silver resumed their sell-off after Friday’s meltdown. Bitcoin recovered a bit after this past weekend’s bloodbath, where the price dipped below $75,000. Due to the partial government shutdown, the expected jobs openings data for December and Friday’s expected January jobs report will be delayed.
After the bell, Reuters reported that OpenAI is “unsatisfied” with the inference performance of Nvidia’s latest AI chips and has been seeking alternatives since last year. This news comes on the heels of a recent report from The Wall Street Journal that Nvidia’s plan to invest $100 billion in OpenAI had stalled.
|
|
|
- After the tie-up, the combined company is aiming to go public at a valuation of about $1.25 trillion, per a Bloomberg report.
-
Tesla, which Bloomberg had previously reported to have been in consideration to be merged among the companies in some way, wasn’t mentioned in the report of the deal. Shares were roughly flat after-hours.
-
The move would tie together two of Musk’s signature companies — two of the biggest privately held firms in the world. It would also bundle together rockets, satellites, the social media site X, and artificial intelligence all under one company.
-
Musk’s companies are already extremely interconnected, including Tesla’s recent $2 billion investment in xAI.
|
On one hand, an IPO at a valuation of $1.25 trillion would immediately place the combined SpaceX/xAI into the top 10 most valuable publicly traded companies on US exchanges. It would be one of the biggest global IPOs ever by valuation. (The largest IPO on record is Saudi Aramco, which went public in Saudi Arabia valued at about $1.9 trillion in 2019.)
On the other hand, would you rather own SpaceX and xAI or Berkshire Hathaway and $200 million? |
|
|
The “just put the AI data centers in space” theory has gotten a great deal of traction lately, despite some significant engineering challenges ahead. Yes, solar energy is available in space, and space is cold. However, thermodynamically speaking, “cold” is more accurately stated as an absence of “hot,” and the absence of “hot” is more related to the absence of, well, anything in space.
Whether it’s actually viable to install, maintain, power, and cool a data center in orbit — and whether it’s competitive to do that compared to installing, maintaining, powering, and cooling a data center in, say, Missouri — is both an unsolved scientific, engineering, and financial question that SpaceX will soon attempt to answer. |
|
|
Turn AI Into Impact With Gartner |
Nearly every executive is asking: How do I translate AI hype into real results? Gartner, the world authority on AI, can get you there.
Gartner helps C-Level leaders with unparalleled AI insights and guidance drawn from 200,000+ in-depth client conversations, 6,000+ AI-related written insights, and 1,000+ AI use cases and case studies.
Our AI-powered AskGartner tool gives clients instant access to best-in-class resources you simply can’t get anywhere else.
Whether you’re developing AI strategy, updating governance models or need to connect investments to measurable business outcomes, our objective insights and expert guidance help leaders start strong, execute with precision and see results fast. And, AI is always front and center at Gartner conferences.
Drive positive ROI on AI with Gartner. |
|
|
Defense, intelligence, and AI software giant Palantir reported Q4 numbers that blew past expectations after the close of trading on Monday. The impressive results included: |
- Sales of $1.41 billion vs. the $1.34 billion predicted.
- A Q1 2026 revenue forecast of over $1.53 billion, while Wall Street had expected $1.33 billion.
- Full-year 2026 revenue guidance above $7.18 billion, while the Street had penciled in $6.3 billion.
|
And that’s just the highlights of its across-the-board beat.
The company exploded as a favorite of retail traders in 2024, but until this latest report, traders had seemingly started to depart. Just a few months back, Palantir’s fairly stellar Q3 numbers were received with a Bronx cheer from traders who dumped the stock in the days after the print.But yesterday, the stock surged as much as 8.4% in aftermarket trading as investors rushed back in.
|
|
|
Before the earnings hit, Palantir was down roughly 25% from the all-time high it hit back in early November, a period over which the major indexes were more or less flat. But that’s no skin off the noses of long-time holders. Over the last three years, Palantir is still up 1,500% or so. We’ll see if the shift holds with the retail crowd in the coming days after this impressive print. |
|
|
Last week, gaming stocks plunged after Google released an AI tool that can create playable, copyrighted worlds. But this week, one analyst says the fears around Project Genie are overblown, noting that these games are limited to “simply moving and jumping” and users cannot do most things any game made in the last 40 years would include. We’d suggest that gaming companies instead be concerned that games are no longer the biggest things on app stores for the first time.
|
|
|
|
