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Founder and CEO of Facebook Mark Zuckerberg speaks at the annual Munich Security Conference on February 15, 2020.
Kuhlmann | Munich Security Conference

Facebook on Monday announced it will begin requiring all of its employees to wear masks when on its campuses in the U.S., regardless of an employee’s vaccination status.

“The health and safety of our employees and neighbors in the community remains our top priority,” a spokeswoman for the company said in a statement. “Given the rising numbers of COVID cases, the newest data on COVID variants, and an increasing number of local requirements, we are reinstating our mask requirement in all of Facebook’s U.S. offices, regardless of an employee’s vaccination status.”

The new policy goes into effect on Wednesday and will remain in effect until further notice. The decision comes as several local governments in the San Francisco Bay Area roll out similar orders requiring all people wear masks when indoors in public places.

Facebook’s on-campus mask policy comes after the company last week announced that it will require all U.S. workers returning to its offices to be vaccinated.

The company isn’t alone in the tech industry in re-instating health safety measures as Covid-19 cases pick up again as a result of the Delta variant.

Google last week announced it will require employees on campus to be vaccinated and postponed its return to office plans until October. Apple also pushed back its return to office plans to October at the earliest, according to a report last month.

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Why Jim Cramer wants to load up on more shares of this DuPont spinoff

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Why Jim Cramer wants to load up on more shares of this DuPont spinoff

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Palantir tops estimates, boosts fourth-quarter guidance on AI adoption

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Palantir tops estimates, boosts fourth-quarter guidance on AI adoption

Alex Karp, chief executive officer of Palantir Technologies Inc., speaks during the AIPCon conference in Palo Alto, California, US, on March 13, 2025.

David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Palantir reported quarterly results that topped analysts’ estimates and issued better-than-expected guidance for the fourth quarter, attributing much of its strength to artificial intelligence. The stock rose about 1% in extended trading.

Here’s how the company did compared to LSEG estimates:

Earnings per share: 21 cents adjusted vs. 17 cents expected

Revenues: $1.18 billion vs. $1.09 billion expected

Palantir, which builds analytics tools for large companies and government agencies, said it expects revenue of about $1.33 billion for the current period, exceeding the $1.19 billion expected by analysts, according to LSEG.

The optimistic guidance comes even as the government shutdown stretches into its second calendar month, and potentially threatens some key contracts. Revenue in Palantir’s U.S. government business grew 52% in the quarter from a year ago to $486 million.

Government sales, particularly from military agencies, have been central to Palantir’s ongoing ascent. Over the years, Palantir has steadily beat out major legacy government contractors, and recently landed a deal worth up to $10 billion contract with the U.S. Army.

Palantir has also faced criticism over how its tools are being used by government agencies, including U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Total revenue in the quarter jumped 63% from $725.5 million a year ago, exceeding $1 billion for the second straight quarter. Net income more than tripled to $475.6 million, or 18 cents per share, from $143.5 million, or 6 cents per share, a year earlier.

For the full year, Palantir now expects about $4.4 billion in sales, topping the $4.17 billion forecast by Wall Street. The company also bumped up its full-year free cash flow outlook to between $1.9 billion and $2.1 billion.

Palantir’s U.S. commercial business more than doubled to $397 million. Total contract value for U.S. commercial deals closed more than quadrupled to $1.31 billion. Over the last few weeks, the company has announced new partnerships with Snowflake, Lumen and Nvidia.

Retail investors have helped drive Palantir’s skyrocketing stock price to new heights. The shares have surged more than 170% this year, lifting the company’s market cap past $490 billion and cementing the company among the most valuable technology names in the world.

Analysts have raised concerns about the stock, which trades at an extreme multiple relative to technology behemoths with far more revenue. In a letter to shareholders, CEO Alex Karp called out the “detractors” who have been “left in a kind of deranged and self-destructive befuddlement.”

“The reality is that Palantir has made it possible for retail investors to achieve rates of return previously limited to the most successful venture capitalists in Palo Alto,” he wrote. “And we have done so through authentic and substantive growth.”

In an interview with CNBC’s Morgan Brennan on Monday, Karp acknowledged that there’s excess in the AI market today and that some companies are eventually going to feel the pain.

“The strong companies are going to get much stronger, and the people pretending they’re doing stuff are going to disappear very quickly,” Karp said.

WATCH: D.A. Davidson’s Luria on Palantir

Palantir is the best software company and it's not even close, says D.A. Davidson's Gil Luria

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Ether falls 7% following a multimillion dollar hack of a decentralized finance protocol

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Ether falls 7% following a multimillion dollar hack of a decentralized finance protocol

Representation of Ethereum, with its native cryptocurrency ether.

Dado Ruvic | Reuters

Ether fell as much as 9% on Monday, slipping below its critical $3,600 support level, shortly after a multimillion dollar hack affected a protocol on the token’s native network. 

The cryptocurrency, which is issued on Ethereum, was last down 6.6% at around $3,600, CoinMetrics data shows. That’s roughly 25% off its high of $4,885 hit on August 22

The coin’s tumble came after Ethereum-based decentralized finance protocol Balancer on Monday lost possibly more than $100 million in a hack. The exploit marks the latest in a series of bearish events that have put digital assets investors on tenterhooks over the past few weeks.

In mid-October, U.S. President Donald Trump announced “massive” tariffs on China over its restriction of rare earth exports, kicking off investors’ flight from crypto to risk-off assets such as gold. And although the president later walked back that threat, his comments sparked a sell-off that triggered cascading liquidations of highly leveraged digital asset positions

Last week, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell cautioned investors about expecting future rate cuts, adding to existing bearish market sentiment.     

“These events have put investors on uneasy footing as we roll into November,” Juan Leon, senior investment strategist at Bitwise, told CNBC. “Macro volatility notwithstanding, this October’s drawdown appears to have been a healthy, albeit sharp, de-leveraging event that flushed speculative excess from the market.”

Some stocks linked to digital assets are also coming under pressure. Coinbase shares were down nearly 4%, while Bitcoin treasury firm Strategy edged down more than 1%.   

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