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As travel industry executives tout the rapid resurgence of tourism and entertainment, the pandemic stock portfolio is getting turned upside down.

Airlines stocks are rallying alongside online booking sites, ride-hailing companies and Airbnb, after earnings reports showed clear signs of a recovery in travel. At the same time, stay-at-home stocks are sagging as borders reopen and health experts indicate that an end to the Covid-19 pandemic could come sooner than expected.

“We’ve seen it everywhere,” Expedia CEO Peter Kern told analysts on an earnings call Thursday after his company reported a 97% jump in revenue from a year earlier. “Cities are picking up. International has picked up. Virtually every area has seen growth.”

Expedia shares soared 16% on Friday and rival Booking Holdings jumped over 7%. Airbnb surged 13% and closed out its best week since its IPO late last year, after the home-sharing company reported better-than-expected revenue and a 280% increase in profit.

Airlines are finally back. Delta had its best week in about a year, climbing 13%, as the U.S. prepares to lift international travel bans. American Airlines jumped 14% and Southwest Airlines rose more than 10% for the week.

The across-the-board rally in travel followed an announcement from Pfizer, which said on Friday that its Covid-19 pill, when combined with a common HIV drug, cut the risk of hospitalization or death by 89% in high-risk adults exposed to the virus. Dr. Scott Gottlieb, a Pfizer board member, told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” that Covid-19 could end in the U.S. by early January, when President Biden’s workplace vaccine mandate goes into effect.

“These mandates that are going to be put in place by Jan. 4 really are coming on the tail end of this pandemic,” said Gottlieb, who’s also a former commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration. 

Meanwhile, Peloton had its worst day on the market since the home workout company’s IPO in 2019. Peloton reported a wider-than-expected quarterly loss late Thursday as it copes with waning demand from the reopening of gyms as well as supply chain constraints.

Peloton shares tumbled 35% on Friday to their lowest level since June 2020.

“We anticipated fiscal 2022 would be a very challenging year to forecast, given unusual year-ago comparisons, demand uncertainty amidst re-opening economies, and widely-reported supply chain constraints and commodity cost pressures,” Chief Executive Officer John Foley said in a letter to shareholders. 

During an all-hands meeting on Friday, Peloton halted hiring across all departments effective immediately, CNBC has learned.

While not as dramatic as Peloton’s plunge, Netflix dropped 6.5% this week, the worst stretch since April for the streaming-video company. Zoom, the video-chat company that headlined everyone’s pandemic portfolio as revenue in 2020 soared 326%, fell over 6% on Friday. Food-delivery provider Doordash, which became a household name last year, fell more than 4%.

Workers returning to the office and consumers going back to the movie theaters, concerts and restaurants could very well spell some trouble for Netflix, Zoom, Doordash and other stay-at-home companies. To get from place to place, people will need rides, which helps explain why investors are rotating into Uber and Lyft.

On Thursday, Uber reported 72% revenue growth from a year earlier, with the number of active mobility drivers increasing nearly 60%. Lyft, which has also invested millions into incentives, said drivers are coming back. Lyft shares jumped 17% this week and Uber climbed almost 8%.

Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said on the company’s earnings call that some of the supply and demand challenges that emerged during the pandemic are working themselves out. Surge pricing incidents have come down by roughly half, and wait times are averaging less than five minutes, he said.

“The rebound is unmistakable,” Khosrowshahi told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” on Friday, adding that airport and business travel are both coming back, though the magnitude of the rebound varies by geography. “The human condition of wanting to move, of wanting to travel, of wanting to get out of the house, it’s true for everyone and it’s universal.”

Broadway shows began reopening in September, while movie ticket sales are up and theaters and concert venues have thrown open their doors. Shares of Live Nation Entertainment surged 15% on Friday after the company reported strong third-quarter earnings, and Eventbrite rose more than 5%.

“Live music roared back over the past quarter,” said Michael Rapino, CEO of Live Nation, on the company’s earnings call. Rapino said ticket sales for major festivals were up 10% in the quarter from 2019 levels, and said “many of our festivals selling out in record time.”

WATCH: Pent up demand for entertainment is driving the sector

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Tech founders call on Sequoia Capital to denounce VC Shaun Maguire’s Mamdani comments

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Tech founders call on Sequoia Capital to denounce VC Shaun Maguire's Mamdani comments

Almost 600 people have signed an open letter to leaders at venture firm Sequoia Capital after one of its partners, Shaun Maguire, posted what the group described as a “deliberate, inflammatory attack” against the Muslim Democratic mayoral candidate in New York City.

Maguire, a vocal supporter of President Donald Trump, posted on X over the weekend that Zohran Mamdani, who won the Democratic primary last month, “comes from a culture that lies about everything” and is out to advance “his Islamist agenda.”

The post had 5.3 million views as of Monday afternoon. Maguire, whose investments include Elon Musk’s SpaceX and X as well as artificial intelligence startup Safe Superintelligence, also published a video on X explaining the remark.

Those signing the letter are asking Sequoia to condemn Maguire’s comments and apologize to Mamdani and Muslim founders. They also want the firm to authorize an independent investigation of Maguire’s behavior in the past two years and post “a zero-tolerance policy on hate speech and religious bigotry.”

They are asking the firm for a public response by July 14, or “we will proceed with broader public disclosure, media outreach and mobilizing our networks to ensure accountability,” the letter says.

Sequoia declined to comment. Maguire didn’t respond to a request for comment, but wrote in a post about the letter on Wednesday that, “You can try everything you want to silence me, but it will just embolden me.”

Among the signees are Mudassir Sheikha, CEO of ride-hailing service Careem, and Amr Awadallah, CEO of AI startup Vectara. Also on the list is Abubakar Abid, who works in machine learning Hugging Face, which is backed by Sequoia, and Ahmed Sabbah, CEO of Telda, a financial technology startup that Sequoia first invested in four years ago.

At least three founders of startups that have gone through startup accelerator program Y Combinator added their names to the letter.

Sequoia as a firm is no stranger to politics. Doug Leone, who led the firm until 2022 and remains a partner, is a longtime Republican donor, who supported Trump in the 2024 election. Following Trump’s victory in November, Leone posted on X, “To all Trump voters:  you no longer have to hide in the shadows…..you’re the majority!!”

By contrast, Leone’s predecessor, Mike Moritz, is a Democratic megadonor, who criticized Trump and, in August, slammed his colleagues in the tech industry for lining up behind the Republican nominee. In a Financial Times opinion piece, Moritz wrote Trump’s tech supporters were “making a big mistake.”

“I doubt whether any of them would want him as part of an investment syndicate that they organised,” wrote Moritz, who stepped down from Sequoia in 2023, over a decade after giving up a management role at the firm. “Why then do they dismiss his recent criminal conviction as nothing more than a politically inspired witch-hunt over a simple book-keeping error?”

Neither Leone nor Moritz returned messages seeking comment.

Roelof Botha, Sequoia’s current lead partner, has taken a more neutral stance. Botha said at an event last July that Sequoia as a partnership doesn’t “take a political point of view,” adding that he’s “not a registered member of either party.” Boelof said he’s “proud of the fact that we’ve enabled many of our partners to express their respected individual views along the way, and given them that freedom.”

Maguire has long been open with his political views. He said on X last year that he had “just donated $300k to President Trump.”

Mamdani, a self-described democratic socialist, has gained the ire of many people in tech and in the business community more broadly since defeating former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo in the June primary.

— CNBC’s Ari Levy contributed to this report.

WATCH: SpaceX valuation is maybe even conservative, says Sequoia’s Shaun Maguire

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Samsung expects second-quarter profits to more than halve as it struggles to capture AI demand

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Samsung expects second-quarter profits to more than halve as it struggles to capture AI demand

Samsung signage during the Nvidia GPU Technology Conference (GTC) in San Jose, California, US, on Thursday, March 20, 2025.

David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images

South Korea’s Samsung Electronics on Tuesday forecast a 56% fall in profits for the second as the company struggles to capture demand from artificial intelligence chip leader Nvidia. 

The memory chip and smartphone maker said in its guidance that operating profit for the quarter ending June was projected to be around 4.6 trillion won, down from 10.44 trillion Korean won year over year.

The figure is a deeper plunge compared to smart estimates from LSEG, which are weighted toward forecasts from analysts who are more consistently accurate.

According to the smart estimates, Samsung was expected to post an operating profit of 6.26 trillion won ($4.57 billion) for the quarter. Meanwhile, Samsung projected its revenue to hit 74 trillion won, falling short of LSEG smart estimates of 75.55 trillion won.

Samsung is a leading player in the global smartphone market and is also one of the world’s largest makers of memory chips, which are utilized in devices such as laptops and servers.

However, the company has been falling behind competitors like SK Hynix and Micron in high-bandwidth memory chips — an advanced type of memory that is being deployed in AI chips.

“The disappointing earnings are due to ongoing operating losses in the foundry business, while the upside in high-margin HBM business remains muted this quarter,” MS Hwang, Research Director at Counterpoint Research, said about the earnings guidance.

SK Hynix, the leader in HBM, has secured a position as Nvidia’s key supplier. While Samsung has reportedly been working to get the latest version of its HBM chips certified by Nvidia, a report from a local outlet suggests these plans have been pushed back to at least September.

The company did not respond to a request for comment on the status of its deals with Nvidia.

Ray Wang, Research Director of Semiconductors, Supply Chain and Emerging Technology at Futurum Group told CNBC that it is clear that Samsung has yet to pass Nvidia’s qualification for its most advanced HBM.

“Given that Nvidia accounts for roughly 70% of global HBM demand, the delay meaningfully caps near-term upside,” Wang said. He noted that while Samsung has secured some HBM supply for AI processors from AMD, this win is unlikely to contribute to second-quarter results due to the timing of production ramps.

Meanwhile, Samsung’s chip foundry business continues to face weak orders and serious competition from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, Wang added.

Reuters reported in September that Samsung had instructed its subsidiaries worldwide to cut 30% of staff in some divisions, citing sources familiar with the matter.

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Waymo to begin testing in Philadelphia with safety drivers behind the wheel

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Waymo to begin testing in Philadelphia with safety drivers behind the wheel

A Waymo autonomous self-driving Jaguar electric vehicle sits parked at an EVgo charging station in Los Angeles, California, on May 15, 2024.

Patrick T. Fallon | AFP | Getty Images

Waymo said it will begin testing in Philadelphia, with a limited fleet of vehicles and human safety drivers behind the wheel.

“This city is a National Treasure,” Waymo wrote in a post on X on Monday. “It’s a city of love, where eagles fly with a gritty spirit and cheese that spreads and cheese that steaks. Our road trip continues to Philly next.”

The Alphabet-owned company confirmed to CNBC that it will be testing in Pennsylvania’s largest city through the fall, adding that the initial fleet of cars will be manually driven through the more complex parts of Philadelphia, including downtown and on freeways.

“Folks will see our vehicles driving at all hours throughout various neighborhoods, from North Central to Eastwick, and from University City to as far east as the Delaware River,” a Waymo spokesperson said.

With its so-called road trips, Waymo seeks to collect mapping data and evaluate how its autonomous technology, Waymo Driver, performs in new environments, handling traffic patterns and local infrastructure. Road trips are often used a way for the company to gauge whether it can potentially offer a paid ride share service in a particular location.

The expanded testing, which will go through the fall, comes as Waymo aims for a broader rollout. Last month, the company announced plans to drive vehicles manually in New York for testing, marking the first step toward potentially cracking the largest U.S. city. Waymo applied for a permit with the New York City Department of Transportation to operate autonomously with a trained specialist behind the wheel in Manhattan. State law currently doesn’t allow for such driverless operations.

Waymo One provides more than 250,000 paid trips each week across Phoenix, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Austin, Texas, and is preparing to bring fully autonomous rides to Atlanta, Miami, and Washington, D.C., in 2026.

Alphabet has been under pressure to monetize artificial intelligence products as it bolsters spending on infrastructure. Alphabet’s “Other Bets” segment, which includes Waymo, brought in revenue of $1.65 billion in 2024, up from $1.53 billion in 2023. However, the segment lost $4.44 billion last year, compared to a loss of $4.09 billion the previous year.

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