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ShipBob fulfillment center in Moreno Valley, California
ShipBob

After ShipBob decided last July to let staffers work from anywhere, the logistics start-up had its landlord erect a wall in the middle of its Chicago headquarters so half the space could be rented out to another company.

On March 1, the office reopened at reduced capacity for socially distanced meetings.

But while it’s using less office space, ShipBob’s real estate needs have been expanding at a breakneck pace. The company, which provides fulfillment services to online retailers, has more than doubled its warehouse count since mid-2020 to 24 locations today, including four outside the U.S., with plans to reach 35 by the end of 2021.

The seven-year-old company is a microcosm of the U.S. commercial real estate market. While office vacancies have soared as employers prepare for a post-Covid future of distributed work, the industrial market is hotter than ever because of a pandemic-fueled surge in e-commerce and increased consumer demand to get more products at Amazon-like speeds.

Vacancy rates in industrial buildings are near a record low and new warehouses can’t get built quickly enough to meet the needs of clothing makers, furniture sellers and home appliance manufacturers. Real estate firm CBRE said in its first-quarter report on the industrial and logistics market that almost 100 million square feet of space was absorbed in the period, the third-highest amount ever, and that a record 376 million square feet is under construction.

Rents rose 7.1% in the quarter from the same period a year earlier to an all-time high of $8.44 per square foot, CBRE said. The firm wrote in a follow-up report last month that prices in coastal markets near population centers and inland port hubs are soaring by double-digit percentages. In Northern New Jersey, average base rent for industrial properties jumped 33% in May from a year earlier, and California’s Inland Empire saw an increase of 24%, followed by Philadelphia at 20%.

“The need to have facilities in these markets, coupled with record low vacancy rates, has often led to bidding wars among occupiers that are driving up rental rates,” CBRE said.

Skyrocketing prices

The wheels were well in motion before Covid-19 hit the U.S. in early 2020. Amazon was already turning next-day delivery into the default option for Prime members, and big box stores like Best Buy and Walmart were racing to add fulfillment space to try and keep pace.

The pandemic accelerated everything. Consumers were stuck at home and ordering more stuff, while physical stores had to go digital to stay afloat.

Grocery delivery added to the market tightness, as Instacart and Postmates were suddenly inundated with orders from customers who didn’t want to enter a Costco, Albertsons or Kroger store. Instacart is now planning a network of fulfillment centers loaded up with cereal-picking robots, according to Bloomberg, and Target has bolstered same-day fulfillment through so-called sortation centers.

In addition to the rapid change in consumer behavior, the pandemic also exposed the fragility of the global supply chain. With facilities in China and elsewhere shuttered, stores experienced dramatic shortages of apparel, car parts and packaging materials.

Retailers responded by securing more storage space to mitigate the impact of future shocks, said James Koman, CEO of ElmTree Funds, a private equity firm focused on commercial real estate.

“The reshoring of manufacturing is gaining momentum,” Koman said. Companies are “bringing more products onshore and need to have room for their products so we don’t fall into another situation like we’re in right now.”

All of those factors are contributing to skyrocketing prices, he said. Additionally, construction costs are higher because of inflation and supply constraints, and companies are building more sophisticated facilities, filled with robots.

“You have these automatic forklifts, conveyor belts, and automated storage retrieval systems,” Koman said. “All this is where the world is going.”

Amazon introduces new robots named Bert and Ernie to fulfillment center operations.
Source: Amazon Inc.

Betting on a long-term need for fulfillment and logistics facilities, ElmTree has acquired about $2 billion worth of industrial space over the past seven months, outpacing prior years, Koman said. He estimates the U.S. will need an additional 135-150 million square feet annually to support e-commerce growth.

For ShipBob, the e-commerce boom has played right into its business model. But competition for space is simultaneously forcing the company to reckon with higher costs.

ShipBob works with brands like perfume company Dossier, powdered energy drink maker Juspy and Tom Brady’s sports and fitness brand TB12, providing a wide network of fulfillment centers for fast and reliable shipping and software to manage deliveries and inventory.

Unlike the retail giants, ShipBob doesn’t go after large football field-sized fulfillment centers, and only has leases at a few of its facilities. Rather, it looks for warehouses that are typically family-owned with 75,000-100,000 square feet and some unused capacity. It then outfits them with ShipBob technology and pays based on order volume and the amount of space it uses.

While ShipBob isn’t signing leases, it is competing for space in warehouses that are now sitting on much more valuable property than they were a year ago. ShipBob CEO Dhruv Saxena said that his company has to be in areas like Southern California and Louisville, Kentucky, a major transportation and logistics hub, despite the rapid increase in prices.

“We have to find ways of placing inventory closer to the end customer even if it comes at a lower margin for us,” Saxena said in an interview late last month after his company raised $200 million at a valuation topping $1 billion.

ShipBob competes directly with a number of fulfillment outsourcing start-ups, including ShipMonk, Deliverr and Shippo. Those four companies have raised almost $900 million combined in the past year.

Not just Amazon

Saxena said a major reason smaller retailers turn to ShipBob is to avoid the costs and hassle of finding fulfillment space and hiring the requisite workers. He likened it to companies outsourcing their computing and data storage needs to Amazon Web Services and paying for how much capacity they use rather than leasing their own data centers.

“The same math applies,” Saxena said. “I can open a warehouse, hire people and rig the software or I can convert those fixed costs into variable costs where I pay on a transaction basis.”

ShipBob employees with CEO Dhruv Saxena in middle
ShipBob

Nate Faust is in the very early stages of building Olive, an e-commerce start-up that’s working with brands to offer more sustainable packaging and delivery options by using recycled boxing materials and bundling items.

Olive opened its first two 30,000 square foot warehouses last year, one in New Jersey and the other in Southern California. Faust, who previously co-founded Jet.com and then worked at Walmart after the acquisition, said if he were entering those leases today, they’d easily be 10% to 15% higher.

Olive isn’t actively in the market for more fulfillment centers and doesn’t face a lease renewal until February, but Faust said start-ups have to be opportunistic. He’s working with real estate firm JLL, which he said is constantly on the prowl for attractive space.

“We have them looking all the time because industrial space is so tight right now,” Faust said. “If we find something perfect for what we’re looking for, it’s not unreasonable to have overlapping leases.”

Olive package
Olive

Vik Chawla, a partner at venture firm Fifth Wall, which invests in property technologies, said the challenges in the real estate market are driving more emerging brands and sellers to the outsourcing model.

“It’s very difficult as a single e-commerce business to try to secure attractive space and run your business,” Chawla said. “The line of people trying to get into industrial buildings is out the door.”

Many tenants occupying that line are traditional big third-party logistics providers (3PLs), like C.H. Robinson and XPO Logistics as well as UPS and FedEx. At the top end of the market, Amazon, Walmart and Target are mopping up space to speed distribution and, in Amazon’s case, to manage fulfillment for its massive marketplace of third-party sellers.

Prologis, the largest U.S. owner of industrial real estate, said in a May report that utilization rates, which indicate how much space is being used, reached close to 85%. Vacancy rates are at 4.7%, close to a record low, the company said.

Amazon is the real estate firm’s biggest customer, occupying 22 million square feet, followed by Home Depot at 9 million and then FedEx and UPS, according to Prologis’ latest annual report. Walmart is seventh.

In April, an analyst on Prologis’ earnings call asked what types of clients were most actively pursuing leases.

“E-commerce is a big component of it, but it’s certainly not all about Amazon,” Michael Curless, Prologis’ chief customer officer, said in response. “Certainly, they’re the most active customer. But we’re seeing a lot of activity from the Targets, the Walmarts, Home Depots, and lots of evidence of the Chinese players making their way to the U.S. and Europe as well.”

WATCH: EY on how Covid has boosted digitalization in the retail industry

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Paramount cuts costs, SoftBank sells its Nvidia stake, Warren Buffett’s new tradition and more in Morning Squawk

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Paramount cuts costs, SoftBank sells its Nvidia stake, Warren Buffett's new tradition and more in Morning Squawk

Traders work on the floor at the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York City, U.S., Nov. 10, 2025.

Brendan McDermid | Reuters

This is CNBC’s Morning Squawk newsletter. Subscribe here to receive future editions in your inbox.

Here are five key things investors need to know to start the trading day:

1. The reopening trade

Investors yesterday were pleased with the Senate’s approval of an agreement that could end the government shutdown. The three major indexes all surged in Monday’s session, regaining ground after posting sizable losses last week.

Here’s what to know:

  • The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite saw its biggest one-day rally since May, signaling traders’ shift back into the artificial intelligence trade. Microsoft snapped its longest losing streak since 2011.
  • Bitcoin climbed back above the $105,000 mark, another sign of the deal boosting animal spirits in the market.
  • The Senate officially passed the bill in another vote last night, sending it to the House of Representatives.
  • Earlier in the day, House Speaker Mike Johnson did not commit to holding a December vote on extending enhanced Affordable Care Act subsidies — one of the deal’s key guarantees for Democrats. Here’s what Democrats are, and aren’t, getting in the deal.
  • Johnson said members of his chamber should return to Washington, D.C., to vote on the deal as soon as possible. Members of Congress were told that votes in the House could begin by 4 p.m. ET tomorrow.
  • When asked if he supports the agreement, President Donald Trump on Monday said “I would say so.”
  • Follow live markets updates here.

2. Cashing in your chips

The logo of Japanese company SoftBank Group is seen outside the company’s headquarters in Tokyo on January 22, 2025. 

Kazuhiro Nogi | Afp | Getty Images

Japanese firm SoftBank said Tuesday that it sold all of its stake in Nvidia for $5.83 billion. Nvidia shares slipped nearly 2% in premarket trading this morning.

The sale comes as SoftBank focuses its attention on OpenAI, the buzzy startup behind ChatGPT. But SoftBank is still involved with Nvidia through other artificial intelligence ventures that use the chipmaker’s technology, such as the Stargate project.

SoftBank also dumped some of its T-Mobile position for $9.17 billion.

3. Paramount+, or Paramount-?

The Paramount Studios in Los Angeles, California, US, on Sunday, Nov. 9, 2025.

Ethan Swope | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Paramount Skydance announced more plans to cut costs, lay off employees and raise prices yesterday. Shares jumped as much as 5% in overnight trading.

The CBS parent said it’s aiming to trim an additional $1 billion from its business. As CNBC’s Lillian Rizzo notes, that’s on top of the $2 billion in savings the company outlined when its merger completed in August. Paramount also announced its latest round of layoffs, tied to its divestiture of parts of its South American business, impacting about 1,600 employees.

The entertainment company said it would hike prices for its Paramount+ streaming service in the first quarter of 2026.

4. Air travel headwinds

American Airlines planes sit at gates at Charlotte-Douglas International Airport (CLT) on November 9, 2025 in Charlotte, North Carolina.

Grant Baldwin | Getty Images

Air travel remains under pressure as the government shutdown strains airport infrastructure. Just over 6% of U.S. flights were cancelled yesterday, according to aviation data firm Cirium.

Air traffic controllers, who are required to work during the shutdown, missed their second full paycheck yesterday. Trump said he would recommend a $10,000 bonus for controllers who don’t take off time during the shutdown, while threatening to dock pay for those who don’t go to work.

Flexjet global CEO Andrew Collins told CNBC’s Leslie Josephs that demand for flights on private planes has jumped sharply in recent days. But the Federal Aviation Administration on Monday limited private flights at 12 major U.S. airports amid the staffing challenges.

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5. A holiday tradition

Warren Buffett and Greg Abel walkthrough the Berkshire Hathaway Annual Shareholders Meeting in Omaha, Nebraska on May 3, 2025.

David A. Grogen | CNBC

Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffett plans to “step up” the pace of giving away his $149 billion fortune to his children’s foundations, according to a letter released yesterday.

But Buffett said he would hold onto a “significant amount” of Class A shares so investors can build confidence in his successor, Greg Abel. Buffett said it “shouldn’t take long” for shareholders to warm up to Abel, who will take over as chief executive next year.

Buffett said his letter will become a Thanksgiving tradition and that Abel will take over writing Berkshire’s annual shareholder letters. In typical fashion for the investing titan, the Oracle of Omaha used his note on Monday to dole out some life advice, too.

The Daily Dividend

How the TNT shortage could impact U.S. consumers

CNBC’s Lillian Rizzo, Sean Conlon, Dan Mangan, Kevin Breuninger, Leslie Josephs, Kate Rogers, Yun Li, John Melloy, Ryan Ermey and Macklin Fishman contributed to this report. Josephine Rozzelle edited this edition.

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AI spending is not all equal. Wall Street rewards hyperscalers, punishes DoorDash and Duolingo

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AI spending is not all equal. Wall Street rewards hyperscalers, punishes DoorDash and Duolingo

Duolingo, Doordash and Roblox apps

Tiffany Heard-Grear | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Across the tech sector this earnings season, companies told Wall Street to get ready for ramped up spending as the artificial intelligence boom accelerates.

But while investors largely rewarded the megacaps for their boosted capital expenditure forecasts, or just shrugged off their guidance, companies outside the trillion-dollar club are getting punished.

DoorDash, Duolingo and Roblox all saw their stock prices suffer double-digit slumps after the companies said spending is on the incline, raising concerns about future profitability. Unlike the tech giants, which are promising hefty buildouts to meet soaring demand for AI services and workloads, smaller companies are getting viewed more skeptically, with analysts uncertain about whether their bets will pay off and result in substantial new revenue opportunities.

“Investors don’t like investment cycles,” Evercore ISI’s Mark Mahaney told CNBC’s “Closing Bell: Overtime” last week. That’s what happened, he said, with “all those companies that went into and out of this earnings cycle and negatively surprised the market by saying, ‘We really want to lean into investments first.'”

Investors don't like investment cycles, says Evercore ISI's Mark Mahaney

DoorDash’s stock sank 17% on Thursday, its worst drop in the food delivery platform’s five years as a public company. In its third-quarter earnings report, DoorDash said it plans to shell out “several hundred million dollars” on new products and technology next year.

“We wish there was a way to grow a baby into an adult without investment, or to see the baby grow into an adult overnight, but we do not believe this is how life or business works,” the company wrote in its earnings release.

DoorDash has recently amped up investments in autonomous delivery, with the launch of Dot in September, and spent a combined $5.1 billion on restaurant booking platform SevenRooms and British food delivery service Deliveroo.

CEO Tony Xu said on the earnings call that the company’s investment track record signals “some success in repeating this playbook, and we’re doing this now for future growth.”

Analysts see it differently.

“Looking ahead, we maintain our Hold rating as we see limited multiple expansion opportunity until there is greater clarity surrounding how long investments could weigh on margins,” wrote analysts at Gordon Haskett.

A DoorDash spokesperson said in a statement that the company is “fortunate to have an increasingly successful core business” and that it takes a “disciplined investment approach” to new projects.

‘Monetization and user growth at odds’

Duolingo also had its worst day as a public company on Thursday, despite beating on revenue and bookings in its third-quarter earnings report.

The stock lost a quarter of its value and is now down 41% for the year, after Duolingo said it’s prioritizing finding new users. The company has been pouring money into AI features, such as an interactive video call option, as it tries to win over paying subscribers.

“There are experiments that put monetization and user growth at odds, and part of my job has been, always, arbitrating between these two,” CEO Luis von Ahn told CNBC after the earnings report. He said the company is shifting the “trade off to be much more towards user growth.”

On the earnings call, von Ahn said that it’s “going to take some time for us to see the results, financial results, over the long-term investments that we’re doing.”

After the report, analysts at KeyBanc Capital Markets downgraded the stock to the equivalent of hold from buy, citing concerns that increased investments will weigh on near-term bookings, earnings and valuation.

“This suggests to us that it might take several quarters to see more meaningful financial benefits,” the firm said.

Duolingo didn’t provide a comment.

AWS to build out new AI infrastructure for OpenAI in $38B deal

Meanwhile, the biggest companies in the tech industry may similarly be years away from seeing if their big AI wagers result in profits. But investors aren’t terribly concerned.

Alphabet and Amazon both rallied after reporting earnings in late October. The companies again raised their forecasts for capital expenditures for the year and suggested that there’s no slowdown coming in 2026.

Amazon Web Services is the leading provider of cloud infrastructure, a market where Google is third, and is racing to build out data centers to meet expected demand for compute capacity tied to AI. AWS and Google are also investing in their own silicon so that they’re less dependent on Nvidia and can offer customers a more complete tech stack.

Microsoft, which is second in the cloud infrastructure market, slipped after its earnings report, which also included a guide to higher capex. But the company, valued at close to $4 trillion, still mostly has the backing of Wall Street as it competes for more AI deals and bigger workloads.

The exception among the megacaps is Meta, which sank 11% following earnings. The company expects to spend as much as $72 billion this year on capex, but doesn’t sell a cloud service that rivals Amazon, Google and Microsoft.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg wears the Meta Ray-Ban Display glasses, as he delivers a speech presenting the new line of smart glasses, during the Meta Connect event at the company’s headquarters in Menlo Park, California, U.S., Sept. 17, 2025.

Carlos Barria | Reuters

While Meta says it’s infusing AI across its product portfolio and improving targeting in its core ad business, the lack of clarity surrounding revenue is giving investors pause. Mahaney grouped Meta in with companies that he said “negatively surprised” the market.

Roblox was also in that category.

Shares of the online gaming platform fell almost 16% on Oct. 30, after the company warned that higher spending on safety and infrastructure could hit margins. CEO David Baszucki told CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street” that safety on its platform was a “top priority.”

Finance chief Naveen Chopra said the investments may weigh on near-term engagement and bookings but are “a magnifier of longer-term growth.”

Analysts at Benchmark downgraded shares to hold from buy, expecting investments will hinder profitability. Roth analysts, who recommend holding the stock, also see a potential hit to margins next year.

“The impact from these initiatives may negatively impact platform engagement in the near term,” the analysts at Roth wrote, “but is expected to have a greater long-term benefit for users.”

Roblox didn’t provide a comment for this story.

WATCH: Rising tide lifting hyperscaler boats

Rising tide is lifting all hyperscaler boats right now, says Madrona's Matt McIlwain

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Oura expects close to $2 billion in 2026 sales, almost doubling for the second consecutive year

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Oura expects close to  billion in 2026 sales, almost doubling for the second consecutive year

The Oura Ring 4.

Courtesy: Oura

The chief executive of Finland’s Oura told CNBC on Tuesday that he expects the wearable tech company to generate close to $2 billion in sales next year.

The smart ring maker has upped its forecast as it invests in artificial intelligence and international expansion, hot on the heels of a $900 million funding round in October. 

Oura is on track to secure $1 billion in sales in 2025, doubling its 2024 revenue, CEO Tom Hale told CNBC’s Arjun Kharpal from Web Summit in Lisbon, Portugal.  

Next year is “certainly going to be a lot more,” Hale said in an exclusive interview. “I don’t know if we know exactly how much but, it’ll be north, maybe close to $2 billion.” 

It represents a sharp increase from a previously reported sales forecast of over $1.5 billion, setting Oura up to nearly double sales for a second year running.  

“I think a big part of that is just that we’ve really hit the market well with health features for women, we’ve expanded internationally, all these things are driving our growth,” Hale said.  

Oura eyes 'close to $2 billion' in 2026 sales: CEO

The Finnish company, which is valued at $11 billion, sold over 5.5 million Oura Rings since the product’s launch in 2015 up until September. Oura says it has sold more than 2.5 million rings since June 2024.

Oura has been an “AI-forward company from the get-go,” Hale said, but he is even more bullish on the company’s adoption of AI going forward as the company eyes a range of preventative healthcare features.  

“One of the things that Oura does particularly well is it generates insights — basically text — for you that helps you understand your metrics,” he said. The company uses AI to translate those data points into advice and coaching. It has also its own chatbot, the Oura Advisor, which is like a “doctor in your pocket” that can be asked questions, Hale added.

In 2022, Oura struck a partnership with Natural Cycles, an FDA-cleared birth control app, to add fertility features to its offering. It introduced glucose monitoring earlier this year, via a partnership with Dexcom, and in October announced blood pressure research. 

“One the things that we really believe is that we can become like this sort of guardian angel, right, that’s with you all the time and is starting to give you these predictions about your longer-term health,” Hale said.  

Despite Oura’s ambitions, there is “no news on an IPO,” he added. 

— CNBC’s Arjun Kharpal contributed to this report

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