Morgan Stanley analysts said in a Friday note that Facebook remains the top pick among large-cap social media stocks, with its investments and monetization efforts offsetting any near-term engagement drop-offs as the coronavirus pandemic nears an end.
“We remain most positive on FB within the large cap social media names as we see their leading ROI, product innovation, and monetization call options (Reels, Marketplace, Shopping, etc) enabling them to navigate through difficult near-term engagement headwinds,” the firm said.
Morgan Stanley also sees Facebook driving ad growth, helping the social media giant with a potential drop-off in engagement.
“We also note that even a slight increase in News Feed ad load could offset any engagement decline. In our view, the extent to which FB can deliver on topline can lead to $16+ of free cash flow per share next year, painting a path toward our $440 bull case (~30% upside),” the analysts said.
As Covid-19 pandemic restrictions lift, people are likely to be spending less time on social media. The firm said lower social media use and engagement leads to the increasing importance of innovation and ad pricing/ROI. That will help drive ad growth and allow the company to beat estimates in the second half of this year and next.
“It will be increasingly important for social platforms to continue to develop products (social shopping, short-form video, maps, etc) that drive engagement and deliver measurable ad ROI directly linking ad dollars to transactions,” the analysts said. It isn’t a new dynamic but has increasing importance in order to meet or beat forward estimates, they added.
Baidu will bring its driverless taxis to Europe next year via a partnership with U.S. ridehailing firm Lyft, as the Chinese tech giant looks to expand its autonomous vehicles globally.
The robotaxis will initially be deployed in the U.K. and Germany from 2026 with the aim to have “thousands” of vehicles across Europe in the “following years,” the two companies said.
Lyft has had very little presence in Europe until last week when it closed the acquisition of Germany-based ride hailing company FreeNow, which is available in over 150 cities across nine countries, including Ireland, the U.K., Germany and France.
Deployment of the autonomous cars is “pending regulatory approval,” Lyft and Baidu said in a Monday statement. It’s unclear if Lyft will offer Baidu’s robotaxis via the FreeNow app or another product.
The partnership marks a continued push from Baidu to expand its robotaxis to international markets.
Last month, Baidu partnered with Uber to deploy its autonomous cars on the ride-hailing giant’s platform outside the U.S. and mainland China, with a focus on the Middle East and Asia, which will launch later this year. The partnership also covers Europe, though a launch date for the region has not yet been disclosed.
In China, Baidu has been operating its own robotaxi service since 2021 in major cities like Beijing, allowing users to hail an Apollo Go car through the app. Meanwhile, for Lyft, the deal could boost the firm’s presence in the region as it looks to take on rivals like Uber and Bolt.
Autonomous vehicles have become a big focus for ride-hailing companies which have looked to partner with companies that are developing the technology for driverless cars.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk was awarded an interim pay package of 96 million shares of the company over the weekend. The shares would be worth about $29 billion.
The company said in a filing Sunday that the pay package would vest in two years as long as Musk continued as CEO or in another key executive position.
The new award would be forfeited if the legal battle over his 2018 compensation ends with Musk being able to exercise the larger pay package, which was valued at $56 billion.
In January, Chancellor Kathaleen McCormick upheld a prior ruling in the case, Tornetta v. Musk, that the compensation plan was improperly granted. Tesla shareholders approved the pay package in June 2024.
The case is now before the Delaware Supreme Court.
Musk’s 2018 pay package included a set of performance targets for the company, which were all achieved.
The judge called it “the largest potential compensation opportunity ever observed in public markets” in her January decision and said it was 33 times higher than the nearest comparison, which was Musk’s prior compensation package.
Harvey co-founders Winston Weinberg and Gabe Pereyra
Courtesy of Harvey
Artificial intelligence startup Harvey on Monday announced it has reached $100 million in annual recurring revenue, or ARR, just three years after its launch.
Harvey runs an AI-powered legal platform for lawyers at law firms and large corporations. Its technology can help with legal research, drafting and diligence projects, and the company is also building industry-specific use cases.
Winston Weinberg, co-founder and CEO of Harvey, said the startup’s ARR milestone has largely been driven by usage. Harvey has surpassed 500 customers, including CNBC’s parent company, Comcast, and its weekly average users have quadrupled over the past year, the startup said.
“Most of our accounts grow pretty massively,” Weinberg told CNBC. “You’ll sell to a Comcast or to a law firm, and they’ll buy a couple hundred seats, and then they expand that usage pretty quickly.”
Weinberg is a former lawyer, and he co-founded Harvey with his friend and roommate Gabe Pereyra, a former research scientist at Google DeepMind and Meta. The pair launched the company in 2022 after experimenting with OpenAI’s large language model GPT-3, which came out before its viral AI chatbot, ChatGPT.
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The company’s name, Harvey, is partially inspired by one of the main characters in “Suits,” a legal drama TV series, Weinberg said.
Harvey has raised more than $800 million from investors, according to PitchBook, including Kleiner Perkins, Sequoia Capital and the OpenAI Startup Fund. The company also earned a spot on the 2025 CNBC Disruptor 50 list.
“With gen AI, and how fast everything’s moving, you just have to learn how to scale really, really fast,” Weinberg said. “I’d say, like every six months I go through a new scaling experience.”
In the months ahead, Weinberg said Harvey is focused on its global expansion and continuing to build out its team. The startup recently hired Siva Gurumurthy, the former director of engineering at Twitter, as its chief technology officer, and John Haddock, who spent a decade at Stripe, as its chief business officer.
Weinberg said he has learned to appreciate the value of a strong team, especially during periods of rapid growth.
“We’re starting to get to the point where we have really good leadership in place,” Weinberg said. “That just changes your ability to scale to such a massive degree.”
Disclosure: Comcast is the parent company of NBCUniversal, which owns CNBC.