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Executive women platform Chief opened a new clubhouse in San Francisco this week.

Chief

In a bustling building in New York’s Flatiron district, two executive women who work at separate companies discuss marketing strategies for their respective businesses. Next to them, three retired women in their sixties share a champagne toast. Across the room, several other women, sitting at single wooden tables, have their heads down at their laptops. Whitney Houston’s “I’m Every Woman” plays in the background.

“I’m in the middle of a career transition,” says one woman to another she just met at the nearby bar. She says she works for Cushman & Wakefield but plans to change careers from her job in human resources.

“I’ve done big companies for far too long and I think it’s time to move on to something smaller,” she continued. “Covid did us all in,” the other woman said, agreeably nodding.

It may sound like a typical professional networking environment but one thing about this building is different: there’s not a single man in sight.

‘Sense that this is a first’

Chief’s San Francisco clubhouse includes a full-service bar.

The recently-opened clubhouse is located adjacent to the Transamerica Pyramid in San Francisco’s financial district. Silicon Valley had the highest demand from members, said founders Lindsay Kaplan and Carolyn Childers. The region is home to 2,000 local members working for Apple, Meta, Google, Microsoft, Salesforce, Zoom and Stanford among others.

The 8,600 square-foot space features a full-service bar with specialty coffee, open lounge space, meeting rooms, private call booths and a Mothers Room. All the artwork in Chief’s clubhouses comes from the women-led company Uprise Art, founded by member Tze Chun.

Over 300 members attended the launch event at the San Francisco clubhouse. Members flew in for the clubhouse opening night in late October. Some arrived straight from the airport. “So exciting!” one woman rolling a suitcase said as she greeted Childers and Kaplan with hugs. “I’ve f—–g earned this,” Kaplan recalled another saying.

Susan Cevallos Coleman, a global vice president at GoPro attended the opening night. “I just looked around and had a moment,” Coleman said.

“You have the profound sense that this is a first,” said Attica Jaques, Global Head of Brand Marketing at Google who also attended the opening night.

‘Full Circle’

A month after the San Francisco Chief club’s opening, women say they already see it as a milestone moment that represents more than just a new building.

Silicon Valley has historically had the highest density of homogeneous demographics that favored white men in executive ranks. It’s also historically been unfriendly to women as exclusionary “boys clubs” long overtook the world’s tech epicenter. Unlike other nearby clubhouses like the Battery, Chief’s new clubhouse is a place designed just for them.

“I know deeply the feeling of the tech industry led by white men,” Jaques said. “It’s interesting coming full-circle and it feels long overdue.”

Executive women platform Chief opened a new clubhouse in San Francisco this week.

Chief

Jaques, a San Francisco native who moved back to San Francisco from New York in 2019, said “we tend to always feel like we have to pull up a seat at the table if it’s not there, so we’ve built a muscle around it.”

Coleman added: “The women who have somehow, some way made it to where we are now, can now influence the younger women who may be hesitant to dip their toes in the lake because what they read is it may not be a friendly place for them.”

“But when I walk into the Chief space, that premise that tech is exclusionary no longer feels true,” she said.

Coleman, who’s spent her career working in tech auditing in Silicon Valley since the early 2000s at Sun Microsystems, said she’s looking forward to using the space as a central meeting place for her core group of Chief members dispersed across the Bay Area. Jaques said she’s looking forward to networking happy hours and programming speakers. The platform hosted a virtual event with speaker Melinda French Gates in early November when around 2,000 Chief members tuned in.

“This is the physical manifestation of what I’ve been benefitting from,” Coleman said after the opening. “I saw so many amazing women, including one I worked with three companies ago.”

The Covid-19 pandemic bolstered Chief’s business as women flocked to Chief’s platform, which served as a support system during a time of solitude, members said. More than 20,000 senior executives have signed on from over 8,500 companies including HBO, American Express, Nike, Google, Goldman Sachs, NASA and Apple. Annual membership starts at $5,800 for women at the vice president level and $7,900 for C-suite executives. About 70% of members are sponsored by their employers.

With backing from Alphabet’s venture arm and a business model that relies on subscription to its digital platform, it’s more sustainable than a real-estate-focused business like The Wing, which was forced to close its doors over the summer.

The platform has a massive waitlist of 60,000 people, but Childers and Kaplan say they should be able to start vetting applicants more quickly now that the company has additional money to hire people and build out the technology.

Less ‘pantsuits and bad cheese plates’

Kaplan briefly worried about a dusty rose art piece at the center of the main San Francisco clubhouse room. “We might have to change that,” she remarked. “It’s kind of pink. I just don’t want it to be like ’this a space for women and this is pink.'”

“So often, executive spaces for women look like a space full of pantsuits and bad cheese plates in the corner but we’re in a moment where we can redefine what it looks like,” she added.

A large open floor plan with leather couches and chairs and high ceilings with bookshelves makes it feel more like a living room for casual, serendipitous interactions, members said.

Bathrooms have brushed gold finishes on faucets and around mirrors. Marble countertops lie under Chief-branded disposable towels by each sink while low-volume music plays overhead. The bar features a mid-century modern design with wooden paneling and a large chandelier made of hundreds of glasses.

The space has several “phone booths” with ring lights built in for Zoom meetings. A room on the other side of the main space is much lighter with eggshell-colored walls, a grand piano, and plush white lounge chairs that appear like furniture from a spa.

“There’s a relaxed atmosphere, no competition,” Coleman said. “We’re just finding ways to support one another.”

“It’s a beautiful space to accompany this feeling that things are profoundly changing,” Jaques said. “Being able to walk and have a new space that you feel welcomed in and meeting other women is going to be incredible and it just feels like there’s no going back to what was before.”

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Super Micro stock sinks 20% after earnings, outlook disappoint

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Super Micro stock sinks 20% after earnings, outlook disappoint

Super Micro missed Q4 estimates

Super Micro Computer shares plunged 20% on Wednesday after the company posted weaker-than-expected fiscal fourth quarter results, dented in part by President Donald Trump’s tariffs.

CEO Charles Liang told investors on a conference call that the company has “taken measures to reduce the impact” of the tariffs.

The company has in recent years benefited from surging demand for AI servers packed with Nvidia chips, but has growth has since slowed.

The server maker also offered guidance late Tuesday that fell short of consensus estimates. Super Micro said it expects 40 cents to 52 cents in adjusted earnings per share on $6 billion to $7 billion in revenue for the fiscal first quarter.

Wall Street had projected 59 cents per share and $6.6 billion in revenue for the first quarter.

Read more CNBC tech news

For the full year, Super Micro said it expects revenue to be at least $33 billion. That’s a step down from its forecast in February, where it projected as much as $40 billion in sales, but greater than the LSEG consensus of $29.94 billion.

Super Micro reported fourth-quarter adjusted earnings per share of 41 cents, compared with expectations for 44 cents. Revenue came in at $5.76 billion, which was below analysts’ forecasts of $5.89 billion.

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YTD stock chart for Super Micro Computer.

CNBC’s Jordan Novet contributed reporting to this story.

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AMD stock slumps 5% on earnings miss, China AI chip concerns

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AMD stock slumps 5% on earnings miss, China AI chip concerns

Lisa Su, president and CEO of AMD, talks about the AMD EPYC processor during a keynote address at the 2019 CES in Las Vegas, Nevada, U.S., January 9, 2019. 

Steve Marcus | Reuters

Shares of Advanced Micro Devices slumped more than 5% after the chipmaker‘s earnings fell short of earnings expectations and raised concerns about the timing of a restart in China shipments.

The Santa Clara, California-based company reported adjusted earnings of 48 cents per share, falling short of the 49 cents per share expected by analysts polled by LSEG.

CEO Lisa Su singled out the hit from U.S. controls on artificial intelligence chips in a call with analysts.

“AI business revenue declined year over year as U.S. export restrictions effectively eliminated MI308 sales to China, and we began transitioning to our next generation,” Su said.

For the current quarter, AMD forecasted $8.7 billion in revenue, plus or minus $300 million, versus $8.3 billion expected by analysts. The company said its guidance does not account for revenue from its MI308 AI chip designed for the China market to work around chip restrictions.

During an interview with CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street” on Wednesday, Su said the company has been working closely with the Trump administration on license requirements necessary to ship its chips to China, but took a “prudent” approach to its guide.

“From our standpoint, we think we have an extremely strong portfolio,” she said. “Tens of billions of dollars is the opportunity in a market that’s going to be, let’s call it 500 billion plus over the next few years.”

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Earlier this year, AMD said it would take a $800 million hit during the second quarter as a result of chip restrictions. AMD said in July it plans to soon resume those shipments as the Department of Commerce gets set to restart application review.

Some Wall Street analysts raised concerns over how soon those shipments may begin. Analysts at Morgan Stanley called the timing of the restart in China shipments “vague,” adding that the company requires a “near terms upside in GPU” to keep its premium.

“China upside sounds like it will take time to materialize (and it sounded like we shouldn’t count too much on it even if licenses are granted), pull-forward and inventory risks remain, and opex continues to march higher which is limiting earnings leverage,” wrote Bernstein analysts.

Investors also raised concerns about the company’s datacenter business, which grew 14% to $3.2 billion and includes its central processors and graphics processing units.

“We are more guarded on the company’s ability to drive significant scale in Datacenter GPUs over time, and think operating leverage is likely to be hampered by the significant OpEx we believe is needed for the company to support its software and systems efforts tied to datacenters,” wrote analysts at Goldman Sachs.

Su said Wednesday the company is seeing strong forecasts for compute from some of its largest customers and anticipates an “inflection point” into the third quarter.

“The data center business is actually the main driver of our growth, and we look at that as the opportunity in front of us,” she added.

Despite the post-earnings move, AMD’s revenues grew 32% from a year ago to $7.69 billion and topped a $7.42 billion estimate from analysts polled by LSEG. Net income jumped to $872 million, or 54 cents per share, up from $265 million, or 16 cents per share in the year-ago period

WATCH: Bernstein’s Stacy Rasgon on semiconductor tariffs, impact on sector and AMD Q2 results

Bernstein's Stacy Rasgon on semiconductor tariffs, impact on sector and AMD Q2 results

CNBC’s Kif Leswing contributed to this article.

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Shopify stock soars 20% on rosy guidance as CFO says tariff hit ‘did not materialize’

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Shopify stock soars 20% on rosy guidance as CFO says tariff hit 'did not materialize'

The logo of Shopify is seen outside its headquarters in Ottawa, Ontario, on Sept. 28, 2018.

Chris Wattie | Reuters

Shopify shares soared 20% Wednesday after the company topped analysts’ estimates for the second quarter, and gave rosy guidance for the third quarter.

Here’s how the company did, compared with estimates from analysts polled by LSEG:

  • Earnings per share: 35 cents adj. vs. 29 cents
  • Revenue: $2.68 billion vs. $2.55 billion

Second-quarter sales surged 31% year over year to $2.68 billion, an acceleration from a year ago, when revenue expanded roughly 20%.

The Canadian e-commerce company also offered third-quarter guidance that surpassed expectations. Shopify said it expects revenue to grow at a “mid-to-high twenties percentage rate” year over year, which is higher than the 21.7% growth projected by analysts, according to StreetAccount.

The upbeat report and guidance suggested Shopify, which sells software for e-commerce businesses, is navigating President Donald Trump‘s trade war better than feared. Last quarter, the company noted there was macroeconomic “uncertainty ahead,” but that it wasn’t seeing significant price increases among its merchants due to the tariffs.

“We had factored into our guidance some potential impact from tariffs, which did not materialize,” Shopify CFO Jeff Hoffmeister said on a conference call with investors.

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Online retail peers Amazon and eBay last week reported strong revenue growth, indicating that consumers kept buying despite concerns of tariffs and rising prices.

The company hasn’t seen any “drops in U.S. demand, whether inbound, outbound or local” and instead saw the market accelerate in the second quarter, Hoffmeister said. Many Shopify merchants have raised prices, he added.

Shoppers don’t appear to be stocking up or pulling forward demand in anticipation of the tariffs, he said.

“So far we’re seeing no slowdown from the tariffs and that includes up until early August, where we are today,” Shopify President Harley Finkelstein said in an interview on CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street.” “The millions of stores on Shopify are doing really, really well.”

Shopify’s gross merchandise sales, or the total volume of merchandise sold on the platform, also came in higher than expected. GMS grew 29% year over year to $87.8 billion, surpassing Wall Street’s projected $81.5 billion, according to StreetAccount.

The company said it expects operating expenses as a percentage of revenue to be 38% to 39%, compared to 39% to 40% in the previous quarter.

Shopify has been investing heavily in adding more artificial intelligence tools to its platform as a way to attract and retain merchants. In May, the company released an “AI store builder” that generates webstores based on a few keywords. Shopify on Tuesday launched a set of tools to support shopping via AI agents.

Company executives said these investments appear to be paying off.

“As we continue to expand our platforms capabilities, add new products, and build for where commerce is heading, Shopify is becoming even more compelling to a wider range of businesses than ever before,” Hoffmeister said.

WATCH: Shopify President: We do well in times of disruption

Shopify president Harley Finkelstein: Shopify tools help merchants navigate tariffs

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