Thursday, November 5, 2026 · 12:17 AM ET
Macro
The Dow surged more than 3% for its strongest day since April 2025 as investors welcomed the removal of election uncertainty, with a sharp drop in oil prices easing inflation fears. Mega-caps Amazon, Microsoft, Apple and Alphabet rallied, but Micron, SanDisk, Marvell and CoreWeave sold off on worries a Democratic Congress could tighten data-center rules and raise AI infrastructure costs.
Macro
President Trump said he is not considering replacing Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth while defending the military campaign against Iran after Republican midterm losses, acknowledging it was 'largely true' the party lost partly because of surging oil and gasoline prices. Asked whether the conflict was worth it, Trump said 'yes' and claimed the war 'will end whenever I want it to.'
Earnings
Uber beat on Q3 2026 with revenue up 10% YoY to $14.8B and adjusted EPS up 35% to $0.88, as adjusted EBITDA rose 31% to $2.96B and gross bookings climbed 20% to $59.8B on 215M monthly active consumers. Management guided Q4 EBITDA to $3.13B–$3.23B and expects ~700 driverless vehicles on its platform by year-end, rising above 2,000 in 2027.
AI Infrastructure
AMD's latest 10-Q shows unconditional purchase commitments jumped roughly 4x to $48.8B from $12.2B at the end of 2025, with about $33.4B due by the end of 2027 for wafers, advanced memory, substrates and packaging. The filing also disclosed $6.2B in cloud commitments, $13.3B in data-center leases to assign or sublease, and lease guarantees nearly doubling to $7.7B, with no partner defaults to date.
AI Infrastructure
Alphabet plans to invest $15B in Malaysia during 2027 and 2028 to expand data-center campuses, clean-energy and water infrastructure, and workforce training, per Reuters. The commitment underscores Google's accelerating push to secure power, water and skilled labor for large-scale AI and cloud operations across Southeast Asia.
Deals
Oracle reportedly scrapped a $7B, five-year agreement that would have given Tencent access to up to 100,000 advanced AI chips in Oracle data centers across Southeast Asia, following Trump administration pressure, per the FT. U.S. officials raised national-security concerns while Beijing urged Tencent toward domestic suppliers, collapsing what would have been Tencent's largest overseas AI compute arrangement.
Earnings
Coherent posted Q1 FY2027 revenue up 50% YoY to $2.37B and adjusted EPS up 80% to $2.09, both ahead of estimates, as gross margin expanded to 40.6%. Data Center & Communications revenue surged 79% to $1.95B on optical networking and AI connectivity demand; management guided Q2 EPS to $2.28–$2.48 and sees FY2027 pro forma revenue growth above 60%.
Markets
The day's most active options by contracts traded were NVDA (6.3M), AAPL (4.7M), TSLA (4.0M), INTC (2.4M), AMZN (2.2M), MU (2.2M), AMD (1.4M), PLTR (1.2M), SPCX (1.2M) and GOOGL (1.1M). The list reflects where traders concentrated activity amid the post-election swings in mega-cap tech and semiconductors.
Markets
Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan purchased 150,000 shares on November 2 at roughly $64.73 each, a personal investment of about $9.7M, per an SEC filing. The sizable insider buy signals confidence as Intel executes its turnaround, expands its AI and data-center business and invests in next-generation foundry manufacturing.
Macro
Combined share repurchases by Alphabet, Amazon, Microsoft, Meta and Oracle reportedly fell to just $4.4B in Q3 2026 — the lowest since Q3 2017 and down about 90% from the $45.9B peak in Q4 2021. The pullback reflects hyperscalers redirecting cash toward AI data centers, GPUs, networking and power, reducing a key source of demand for their own shares.
AI Infrastructure
Goldman Sachs and Apollo have begun marketing portions of SpaceX's roughly $40B AI chip financing to institutional investors, with allocations up to $500M each, per Bloomberg. The record GPU financing involves an Apollo-backed entity buying ~$47.3B of NVIDIA GPUs (mainly next-gen Rubin chips) and leasing them to SpaceX for about five years, structured to keep the debt off SpaceX's balance sheet.
Macro
South Korea's exports jumped 94% YoY in October to $115B — the second-highest monthly total on record and fastest growth since 1974 — marking a fifth straight month above 60% growth. Chip exports skyrocketed 259% to a record $56B and computer exports surged 497%, underscoring the country's central role in the AI hardware supply chain via Samsung and SK Hynix.
AI Infrastructure
Alphabet's Google committed $15 billion over two years to expand data-center and cloud infrastructure in Malaysia, a build-out it says will support more than 37,000 jobs a year as it races to add AI capacity in Southeast Asia.
AI / Cloud Deal
Oracle scrapped a roughly $7 billion AI cloud-computing agreement with China's Tencent amid U.S. political and export pressure, a setback to its push to supply AI compute capacity to Chinese technology giants.
Markets / Debt
Meta drew a record 53 billion euros of orders for its first-ever euro-denominated bond sale, following a multibillion-dollar U.S. bond deal, as the company taps debt markets to help fund its surging AI data-center spending.
Semiconductors
Nvidia's Chinese customers are set to receive only about 1% of the roughly $70 billion in RTX chips they had ordered, as U.S. export restrictions continue to choke the company's supply to the China market.
Fintech / IPO
Nigerian fintech OPay has paused its planned U.S. initial public offering after a Chinese regulatory inquiry, stalling what would have been one of Africa's most closely watched fintech listings.
Earnings
Reporting third-quarter results, Uber said it plans to more than double the self-driving cars on its platform over the next year — aiming for about 2,000 robotaxis by the end of next year — and will arrange outside financing to build self-driving fleets, as it chases Waymo in the robotaxi race.
Fintech Earnings
Stablecoin issuer Circle reported third-quarter revenue rose 17% to $875 million, boosted largely by a one-time token sale, while saying it will cut 5% of its workforce to align its structure with its operating model and strategic priorities.
AI Infrastructure
Shares of neocloud providers CoreWeave and Nebius fell Wednesday even as broader tech rose, as investors read Tuesday's wins for anti-data-center candidates as especially bad for newer cloud firms; CoreWeave's bonds hit new lows amid scrutiny of Texas data centers.
Social Media Earnings
Snap shares fell after it reported third-quarter results in which daily active user growth missed estimates — daily user numbers were roughly flat in the U.S. and Europe from the prior quarter and down from a year earlier — reflecting sluggish advertising growth.
Semiconductors
Arm's latest sales forecast underwhelmed investors despite AI-driven demand, pressuring its shares as the chip-design firm's guidance fell short of the lofty expectations built into its valuation.
Semiconductors
Qualcomm issued a soft profit outlook after warning that rising supply costs would weigh on margins, disappointing investors even as it pushes to diversify beyond smartphone chips into AI and automotive.
AI Infrastructure
Microsoft scaled back some data-center spending following construction delays by cloud provider Iren, which reports earnings this week and is under pressure as borrowing costs have risen — a sign of strain in the AI data-center build-out.
AI / M&A
OpenAI agreed to acquire Pierre, a developer-tools startup whose products are already used by OpenAI's Codex coding agent, deepening its push to strengthen its AI software-development stack.
Big Tech / AI Spending
Apple is cutting internal AI usage budgets as part of a broader effort to rein in spending, a cost-discipline move that contrasts with rivals' surging AI investment.
Deals · The Information
Palo Alto Networks is in talks to acquire three-year-old Israeli security startup Clutch Security for around $500 million, which would be its fifth acquisition announced this year. Clutch builds software that helps companies track the passwords and authentication codes used by AI agents, bolstering Palo Alto's defenses against new AI-driven threats.
AI · Bloomberg
Alphabet's Isomorphic Labs is in talks to raise roughly $5 billion in new funding to advance its use of artificial intelligence for drug discovery, according to people familiar with the matter. The raise would mark one of the largest financings yet for an AI-for-science company.
AI Chips · Bloomberg
Tenspresso, a three-month-old AI chip startup founded by former Google AI chip engineers, is in talks for financing that would value it at $500 million, according to people familiar with the matter. The quick valuation underscores continued investor appetite for custom AI silicon ventures.
Markets · Bloomberg
Shares of Australian data-center operator NextDC jumped the most since 2010 after rival operators, reported to include Goodman and Digital Realty, bought equity following a selloff in the stock. The move signals strong strategic demand for data-center capacity despite recent AI-infrastructure jitters.
Deals · Bloomberg
China's state planner, the NDRC, has blocked SoftBank's multibillion-dollar deal to acquire ABB's industrial robotics unit, according to an FT report. SoftBank, described as a Japanese AI investor, was recently informed of the decision and is weighing whether it can seek approval again.