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Yesterday brought another big day of earnings reports from the world’s top tech companies. Judging by overnight trading, the numbers aren’t quite spooking investors like Meta’s report did.

Here’s what to know:

• Amazon‘s stock surged 13% after the company reported hotter-than-expected earnings and revenue growth of 20% in its cloud business. The e-commerce giant also hiked its capital expenditures guidance for 2025 to $125 billion and said that the figure should be even higher next year.
• Shares of Apple rose 2% after the iPhone maker beat analyst expectations. CEO Tim Cook said demand for the new iPhone 17 demand is “off the chart.” Apple has differentiated itself within megacap tech with a more conservative approach to artificial intelligence spending.
• Meanwhile, Netflix climbed 3% after the streamer announced a 10-to-1 stock split — a largely cosmetic change that’s typically done to rev up retail trader interest.
• Tech stocks sold off in yesterday’s session, with the sector dragged down by Meta and Microsoft‘s post-earnings slides. The three major indexes are still all tracking to end the month — which concludes with today’s closing bell — in the green.
• Follow live markets updates here.

Competitors Delta Air Lines, United Airlines and American Airlines came together yesterday to call for an end to the federal government shutdown, which is now on its 31st day. Lobbying group Airlines of America, of which all three carriers are members, joined a roundtable with Vice President JD Vance and Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy at the White House yesterday.

U.S. air traffic controllers missed their first full paychecks this week because of the closure. Delta urged the Senate to “immediately pass a clean continuing resolution,” saying in a statement, “Missed paychecks only increases the stress on these essential workers, many of whom are already working mandatory overtime to keep our skies safe and secure.”

Meanwhile, the Chamber of Commerce reported that government contractors are cumulatively losing about $3 billion for each week of the shutdown. The Congressional Budget Office warned earlier this week that the closure has already wiped out at least $7 billion in gross domestic product by the end of next year.

Chevron exceeded Wall Street’s expectations on both lines this morning. The Houston-based company also posted a record daily production of 4.1 million barrels in its third quarter, lifted by its acquisition of Hess.

On other other hand, Exxon Mobil reported third quarter revenue that missed analysts’ forecast. The energy company said its net income fell 12% to $7.55 billion in the period.

Don’t miss Exxon Mobil CEO Darren Woods on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” in 8 a.m. ET hour, followed by Chevron CEO Mike Wirth on “Squawk on the Street” at 9:15 a.m. ET. Watch CNBC live on TV, CNBC Pro or CNBC+.

Car makers are preparing for a new nightmare scenario: a potential shortage of auto semiconductor chips.

At the heart of these concerns is a company called Nexperia, a chip supplier owned by a Chinese company that was taken over by the Dutch government last month. China responded by blocking exports of Nexperia’s products, leading automakers to set up “war rooms” to monitor the situation and Honda to reduce production.

U.S.-listed shares of Stellantis also tumbled around 9.5% yesterday after the Jeep and Dodge parent warned it was facing one-off costs. The charges overshadowed what was otherwise a fairly positive third quarter for the automaker.

Rising chocolate prices may be leaving lovers of the sweet treat feeling sour. They’re up close to 30% since last Halloween and almost 78% over the last half decade, according to data from Circana and the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

As CNBC’s Luke Fountain reports, chocolate may be loosing its luster thanks to sticker shock and the rise of cheaper, trendier alternatives. Circana found chocolate made up 44% of Halloween candy sales this year, down from 52% in 2024.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said on Friday that artificial intelligence had reached a “virtuous cycle,” tipping the industry for continuous growth.

Speaking at the APEC CEO Summit in South Korea, Huang said the vast improvements in AI models were leading to more investment in the technology, which was, in turn, improving the AI models even further.

“We have now achieved what is called the virtual cycle,” he said on stage at the event, wearing a suit rather than his usual black leather jacket.

“The AIs get better. More people use it. More people use it, it makes more profit, creates more factories, which allows us to create even better AIs, which allows more people to use it. The virtual cycle of AI has been designed, and this is … the reason why you’re seeing the world’s capex going so fast.”

His comments come as Big Tech is spending billions to build out AI-related infrastructure and serve its end users.

This year was expected to be a big one for AI spend with Meta, Amazon, Alphabet and Microsoft announcing plans to spend over $300 billion combined on AI technologies and datacenter buildouts. This looks set to continue into 2026 as the tech giants plan to boost spending again, per their respective earnings, reported this week.

Dan Ives, Wedbush Securities global head of technology research, described Nvidia as “the foundation of the AI Revolution” in comments to CNBC after Huang’s comments on stage.

He described the AI virtuous cycle as: “The more demand, the more building of AI building blocks. And demand creates more demand and capex.”

Huang stressed that profitability was at the heart of the current boom in AI capital investment.

“When something becomes profitable, you want to manufacture more of it, just like when you’re manufacturing chips and wafers and DRAM, if the manufacturing of those chips were profitable, you want to build more factories to create more chips,” he added.

Nvidia, which became the first company to surpass $5 trillion in market value earlier this week, announced a partnership with Korean semiconductor giant Samsung earlier on Friday. Samsung plans to buy and deploy a cluster of 50,000 Nvidia GPUs to improve its chip manufacturing for mobile devices and robots.

Huang painted a picture of the future in which AI is able to “work,” rather than just be used as a tool. Highlighting the rise of fully automated manufacturing factories, the CEO expects AI to reshape $100 trillion worth of industries around the world.

— CNBC’s Kif Leswing contributed to this report.

Korean semiconductor giant Samsung said on Thursday that it plans to buy and deploy a cluster of 50,000 Nvidia graphic processing units to improve its chip manufacturing for mobile devices and robots.

The 50,000 Nvidia GPUs will be used to create a facility Samsung is calling an “AI Megafactory.” Samsung didn’t provide details about when the facility would be built.

It’s the latest splashy partnership for Nvidia, whose chips remain essential for building and deploying advanced artificial intelligence.

The collaboration with Samsung comes after Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang on Tuesday announced in Washington, D.C., that Nvidia was selling collaborating with companies including Palantir, Eli Lilly, CrowdStrike and Uber.

Shortly after the speech, Huang was spotted in South Korea drinking beer with Samsung Chairman Lee Jae-yong and other business leaders, according to local media. Other Korean companies, including SK Group and Hyundai, are also deploying similar amounts of GPUs, Nvidia said.

“We’re working closely with the Korean government to support its ambitious leadership plans in AI,” Raymond Teh, Nvidia’s senior vice president of Asia-Pacific, said on a call with reporters on Wednesday.

The partnerships support Huang’s claim on Tuesday that Nvidia has a book of business that totals $500 billion from its current generation GPU, called Blackwell, in addition to its next-generation GPU, called Rubin.

The forecast helped boost Nvidia’s stock, making the company the first to reach a market cap of $5 trillion.

On Thursday, Nvidia representatives said they will work with Samsung to adapt the Korean company’s chipmaking lithography platform to work with Nvidia’s GPUs. That process will results in 20 times better performance for Samsung, the Nvidia representatives said. Samsung will also use Nvidia’s simulation software called Omniverse. Known for its mobile phones, Samsung also said it would use the Nvidia chips to run its own AI models for its devices.

In addition to being a partner and customer, Samsung is also a key supplier for Nvidia.

Samsung makes the kind of high-performance memory Nvidia uses in large quantities, alongside its AI chips, called high bandwidth memory. Samsung said it will work with Nvidia to tweak its fourth-generation HBM memory for use in AI chips.

WATCH: Night out in Seoul: Nvidia, Samsung, and Hyundai bosses bond over fried chicken and soju