AI shopping agents, which choose and buy products for their users, will make the biggest technology companies stronger, ING said in a note on Thursday. "AI agents are rarely neutral actors," wrote Katinka Jongkind, a senior economist at the Dutch bank. They are "inherently linked to the interests of platforms, marketplaces and technology companies", the note says.
AI agents that shop for us will make the biggest platforms stronger, ING says. Amazon has blocked Meta's Muse agent, Shopify has let it in, and Amazon's ad business shows why.
Musk asked if Mukesh Ambani is ‘the real boss of India’ as Starlink waits to launch there. Jio and Airtel hold 77% of India's mobile users. The government denies any bias.
PepsiCo earnings: third-quarter revenue rose 5.6%, but PepsiCo cut its 2026 profit forecast as sales in North America stalled and input costs kept rising.
Tesco results for the half year: adjusted operating profit rose 6.3% to £1.78bn, and Tesco raised its profit forecast for the year and its buyback to £950m.
Samsung earnings guidance puts third-quarter operating profit at 107.4tn won, about $76bn, almost nine times last year's, as AI demand keeps memory chips short.
Levi Strauss earnings rose on $79m of tariff refunds after the Supreme Court ruling. Without them, operating profit was flat on the year and US sales fell 1%.
Schneider Electric will pay $205 a share in cash for PTC, the design software maker. Its shares fell 10% on the news, while PTC's still trade below the offer.
Since 1946, more S&P 500 bear markets have ended in October than in any other month. Today the index is 1% from a record, yet 182 of its stocks are in a bear market of their own. PepsiCo is one.
The consultancy beat its own forecast, booked $22.2bn of new work and expects growth of 3% to 6% next year. Its shares had lost about a third of their value this year on fears that AI would shrink demand.
This year's chip rally rests on a few leaders. China is building its own chips, memory and software to replace them. Nvidia barely moved, but a DeepSeek scare cost it $593bn in a day last year.
An early independent test ties Google's new model with OpenAI's best, behind Anthropic. Google may not need to lead. It sells computing power to its rivals, and owns part of one.
Revenue rose 379% to $54.2bn and the gross margin reached 87%. Micron expects supply to be much tighter in 2027 and 2028. The shares, up 273% this year, rose 3%.
Sales fell 4% and Nike expects them to fall by a high single digit for the year. The shares dropped 8% after hours. At the guided profit, the dividend costs more than Nike earns.
The shares are down more than 40% this year and Nike has left the S&P 100. Analysts expect sales to fall again. Small investors are more patient than Wall Street.
Oracle, Amazon and Microsoft have cut thousands of jobs and named AI as a reason. Apple cut just over 200. John Ternus now wants fewer managers and flat headcount, and he has looked at what AI could do instead.
John Stankey calls a SpaceX mobile network “not a viable strategy” and bets another $3bn on fibre. Starlink has 12 million subscribers, and four in ten US homes still cannot get fibre.
Novo Nordisk will pay up to $2.6bn for an early-stage weekly pill from Hengrui. Its shares are down more than 70% from the peak, as Lilly wins in America and generics undercut Novo abroad.
The smart-ring maker cited uncertainty in the market. Anthropic’s listing could be the largest ever, and companies that can afford to wait are keeping out of its way.
GPT-6.1 Astra failed OpenAI’s own safety tests on the eve of DevDay. Anthropic overtook OpenAI this spring on revenue and valuation, and hired some of the best-known researchers in the field.