Facebook this week announced a $100 million commitment to a program that supports small businesses owned by women and minorities by buying up their outstanding invoices.
By buying up outstanding invoices, the Facebook Invoice Fast Track program puts money in the hands of small businesses that would have otherwise had to wait weeks if not months to get paid by their customers.
The program is the latest effort by Facebook to build its relationships and long-term loyalty among small businesses, many of whom rely on the social network to place ads targeted to niche demographics who may be interested in their services.
Businesses can submit outstanding invoices of a minimum of $1,000, and if accepted, Facebook will buy the invoice from the small business and pay them within a matter of days. The customers then pay Facebook the outstanding invoices at the same terms they had agreed to with the small business. For Facebook, which generated nearly $86 billion in revenue in 2020, waiting for payments is much less dire than it is for small businesses.
Facebook piloted a smaller version of the program in 2020 after hearing how much the company’s suppliers were struggling in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, said Rich Rao, Facebook’s vice president of small business.
“We just heard first-hand the financial hardships that these suppliers were facing, and it was created really quickly and brought up as an idea and pitched to our CFO to say, ‘Hey, would we be able to help our suppliers with this?'” Rao said. “It was a very small pilot, but we did see that be very successful.”
Now, Facebook is drastically expanding the program and will buy up to $100 million in outstanding invoices. Rao estimates this will support approximately 30,000 small businesses.
“It’s a new concept, but we’re really excited about it,” Rao said.
U.S. businesses owned by women and minorities, and that are members of supplier organizations that serve underrepresented groups, are eligible to apply for the program. This includes the National Minority Supplier Development Council, Women’s Business Enterprise National Council, National LGBT Chamber of Commerce, the National Veterans Business Development Council, Disability: IN and the U.S. Pan Asian American Chamber of Commerce. Facebook is also exploring adding more partner organizations for the program, the company told CNBC.
Lisa Dunnigan, co-founder of The Wright Stuff Chics, relied on the Facebook Invoice Fast Track program to keep her business afloat.
Courtesy of Facebook
Among entrepreneurs who have already gone through the pilot of the program is Lisa Dunnigan, co-founder of the The Wright Stuff Chics, which sells merchandise for teachers and puts on the Teach Your Heart Out teachers conference.
After the pandemic forced Dunnigan to cancel all of her company’s in-person events in 2020, Dunnigan’s business announced a virtual version of their Teach Your Heart Out conference scheduled for July. Teachers registered for the conference in early 2021, but many paid with purchase orders that take “a very long time” to be paid out, Dunnigan said. After collecting the applications, Dunnigan submitted them to Facebook, and the company paid her more than $10,000 within a matter of days.
“This program has been a life saver for our company,” said Dunnigan, who was introduced to CNBC by Facebook.
Since then, Dunnigan said she has applied to the program again and have had Facebook pay their outstanding invoices multiple times.
Dunnigan’s story is among the many Facebook saw after the launch of their pilot that indicated to the company that this was something worth scaling up, Rao said.
“We were just overwhelmed by the stories that came back,” he said.
Interested businesses will be able to start applying on Oct. 1 after the program officially expands, Facebook said.
The company said it expects third-quarter earnings between $1.36 and $1.60 per share, a midpoint of $1.48 per share. That fell short of an LSEG estimate of $1.50.
Texas Instruments anticipates revenues between $4.45 billion and $4.48 billion. The midpoint of $4.63 billion was slightly ahead of the $4.59 billion expected by analysts.
In an earnings call with analysts, CEO Haviv Ilan said the company is experiencing a “shallow” recovery in the automotive sector and said customers may have lingering worries over tariffs and geopolitical uncertainty.
Read more CNBC tech news
Despite the post-earnings slump, Texas Instruments posted a 16% year-over-year jump in revenue. The company reported earnings of $1.41 per share on $4.45 billion in revenue, surpassing the earnings of $1.35 per share on $4.36 billion in revenue expected by LSEG analysts.
Ilan said that some of the second-quarter strength may have come from a pull forward in demand to acquire inventory ahead of tariffs.
Net income for the company rose 15% to $1.3 billion, or $1.41 per share, from $1.13 billion, or $1.22 per share, a year ago.
Elon Musk, chief executive officer of SpaceX and Tesla, attends the Viva Technology conference at the Porte de Versailles exhibition center in Paris, June 16, 2023.
Gonzalo Fuentes | Reuters
Tesla will report second-quarter results after the close of regular trading on Wednesday.
Here’s what Wall Street expects, according to an average of estimates compiled by LSEG:
Earnings per share: 43 cents
Revenue: $22.74 billion
Revenue in the period is expected to drop 11% from a year earlier, marking a second straight quarterly decline. In early July, Tesla reported a 14% year-over-year slide in vehicle deliveries to 384,000 for the second quarter.
Deliveries are the closest approximation of EV sales reported by Tesla but aren’t precisely defined in its shareholder communications.
Tesla’s slump this year is partly due to a backlash against the company in the U.S. and Europe, after CEO Elon Musk spent heavily to help reelect President Donald Trump, endorsed Germany’s extreme anti-immigrant AfD party, and then led the Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency. At DOGE, Musk helped to slash the federal workforce, roll back regulations, and eliminate USAID.
Other automakers saw their electric vehicle sales increase, eating away at Tesla’s market share during the second quarter.
General Motors’ U.S. sales of EVs rose 111% year-over-year to nearly 46,300 units in the period for an estimated market share of 16%, still far behind Tesla.
Musk’s political activism hasn’t been the only factor weighing on the brand.
Read more CNBC Tesla coverage
Tesla has put off the production of a more affordable “model 2” EV, while other automakers are now offering a greater variety of vehicles, and China-based competitors are selling affordable EVs with high-tech self-driving features as a standard rather than premium option.
Tesla shares are down about 17% for the year, the worst performance among tech’s megacaps. The Nasdaq is up more than 8% in 2025.
Musk has tried to keep fans and investors focused on Tesla’s future, which he envisions as being dominated by the company’s robotaxis, and humanoid Optimus robots. Musk sees Tesla’s robotaxis as working for their owners, making them money while they sleep. Optimus robots, he says, will be so sophisticated they can serve as factory workers or babysitters.
Tesla opened a diner and charging station in Los Angeles this week, where fans can see the Optimus robots at work on a simple task, slowly scooping popcorn. The company faces massive competition in robotics from developers including 1X Technologies, Agility Robotics, Apptronik, Boston Dynamics and Figure AI.
In June, Tesla began testing a robotaxi service in Austin, Texas, which operates in a limited area with a human valet on board. The service is accessible only to select riders, generally Tesla and Musk enthusiasts.
The robotaxi rollout is seen by bulls as a positive sign for the company, but Bank of America analysts cautioned in a recent report that it would have “immaterial financial ramifications” in the near term.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, meanwhile, has pressed Tesla for information about reported incidents where the vehicles appeared to violate traffic laws. In one incident, a Tesla robotaxi scraped a parked vehicle at a pizzeria parking lot in Austin, and in another, a robotaxi veered out of its lane briefly into oncoming traffic.
In a note earlier this month, Barclays analysts said Tesla has shown “weak fundamentals” heading into its earnings report. Still, shareholders have remained excited about Tesla’s “robotaxi narrative,” wrote the analysts, who have the equivalent of a hold rating on the stock.
Wednesday’s report will be the first for Tesla since Musk officially left his role in the Trump administration and immediately preceded to publicly slam the president, mostly for the Republicans’ spending package that he endorsed.
Musk has since promised to start a new political party in the U.S. which he calls The America Party.
One retail investor submitted an anonymous question via the Say platform, which Tesla uses ahead of earnings calls, to ask, “With Elon Musk now more publicly involved in U.S. politics through the new America Party, is Tesla taking any steps to manage potential risks, whether from shifting political alliances, regulatory perception, or public opinion?”
Most questions submitted to the platform sought updates from Tesla about its robotaxi test in Austin, self-driving ambitions and its plans for a more affordable EV model.
Tesla’s automotive gross margins are also likely to be in focus, along with commentary on how the company will weather Trump’s tariffs and the end of federal tax credits for EV buyers.
Company executives will host an earnings call with analysts at 5:30 p.m. ET.
Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai speaks at a Google I/O event in Mountain View, Calif., Tuesday, May 20, 2025.
Jeff Chiu | AP
Alphabet is set to report its second-quarter earnings after the bell Wednesday.
Here’s what analysts polled by LSEG are expecting:
Revenue: $93.94 billion
Earnings per share: $2.18
Wall Street is also watching these numbers in the report:
YouTube advertising revenue: $9.56 billion, according to StreetAccount
Google Cloud revenue: $13.11 billion, according to StreetAccount
Traffic acquisition costs (TAC): $14.18 billion, according to StreetAccount
Alphabet is among the megacaps expected to be a major driver of earnings growth during the second-quarter earnings season. Wall Street is anticipating the search giant to report a 10.9% increase in revenue and 15% growth in earnings per share.
Shares of Alphabet haven’t moved much this year, lagging the other Magnificent Seven stocks and the S&P 500. Investors are primarily concerned about the rise of artificial intelligence chatbots, which could impact Google’s ability to remain competitive in search.
During the second quarter, the search giant rolled out a number of new AI products.
At its annual Google I/O conference in May, Google announced a new subscription tier, called “Google AI Ultra,” that offers access to the company’s “cutting edge” AI features for $249.99 per month. Google also unveiled its return to the smart glasses market with a $150 million partnership with Warby Parker — the two companies said they plan to launch a series of smart glasses as soon as next year.
Google in May also announced a venture fund to invest in AI startups. As part of the “AI Futures Fund,” eligible startups will receive Googleinvestment, early access to AI models, and hands-on support from Google researchers, engineers and go-to-market specialists. They also get credits to use on Google Cloud.
Additionally in May, Google began testing the placement of its “AI Mode” product on its home page, directly beneath the Google search.
Earlier this month, OpenAI added Google to its list of suppliers, saying it expects to use the search company’s cloud infrastructure for its popular ChatGPT service. The announcement represented a win for Google, whose cloud unit is younger and smaller than those of Amazon and Microsoft.
Google made a splash in the AI talent wars, announcing it would bring in Windsurf CEO Varun Mohan and other top researchers at the artificial intelligence coding startup as part of a $2.4 billion deal that also includes licensing the company’s technology.
Internally, Google also made a number of personnel changes during the quarter.
The company added the new role of chief AI architect when it elevated Koray Kavukcuoglu from his position as Google DeepMind’s chief technology officer in June.
Google also made more workforce reductions by offering buyouts to U.S.-based employees across several of its divisions, including search, ads and commerce.
Alphabet made several strides with Waymo, its self-driving car unit, during the quarter.
Waymo reached 100 million “real world, fully autonomous miles” driven on public roads, the company said last week. Waymo also announced expansions into new markets.
In June, Waymo announced plans to drive vehicles manually in New York, marking the first step toward potentially cracking the largest U.S. city. In July, the company said it will do limited testing in Philadelphia and it began offering accounts for teens ages 14 to 17, starting in Phoenix.
The company also endured some less-flattering optics during the quarter.
In June, Google’s cloud suffered significant global outages knocking down or disrupting dozens of large internet services, including OpenAI and Shopify, among others.