Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce, participates in a conversation on AI and the Future at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Leaders’ Week in San Francisco, California, on November 16, 2023.
Andrew Caballero-Reynolds | AFP | Getty Images
Salesforce shares rose more than 8% in extended trading on Wednesday after the cloud software vendor reported fiscal third-quarter earnings that topped analysts’ estimates.
Here’s how the company did:
Earnings: $2.11 per share, adjusted, versus the $2.06 per share expected by LSEG
Revenue: $8.72 billion versus the $8.72 billion expected by LSEG
Revenue increased 11% from $7.84 billion a year ago. Salesforce, which has historically expanded by well over 20% a year, has seen its growth rates slip in recent quarters as businesses have looked to reduce spending due to economic uncertainties and high interest rates.
However, the stock has jumped more than 70% this year, outperforming the Nasdaq, which has climbed 36%. That’s largely because Salesforce has been able to bolster profits by lowering expenses. In January, the company announced that it was cutting 10% of jobs and reducing some office space as part of a restructuring plan.
Salesforce on Wednesday raised its fiscal 2024 forecast for operating cash flow growth to 33% from 30%. It also said revenue for the fiscal fourth quarter will increase about 10% to between $9.18 billion and $9.23 billion. Analysts were expecting revenue of $9.21 billion, according to LSEG.
“We had another strong quarter of executing on our profitable growth plan we set in motion last year, delivering $8.7 billion in revenue and again raising our operating margin guidance for this fiscal year,” Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff said in the press release.
In its biggest unit, which provides customer support, Salesforce saw revenue jump 12% to $2.07 billion. Revenue in the sales software segment also rose 12% to $1.9 billion. Platform and other revenue, which includes Slack, increased 11% to $1.69 billion.
Salesforce shares rose to $250 after the earnings report. At that level, they’re about 20% off their record high from two years ago.
In exchange for 15% of revenues from the chip sales, the two chipmakers will receive export licenses to sell Nvidia’s H20 and AMD’s MI308 chips in China, according to the FT.
The arrangement comes as President Donald Trump’s tariffs continue to reverberate through the global economy, underscoring the White House’s willingness to carve out exceptions as a bargaining tool.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang met with Trump last week, according to the FT.
In a statement, Nvidia told the Financial Times: “We follow rules the U.S. government sets for our participation in worldwide markets.”
Last week, Trump had said he would implement a 100% tariff on imports of semiconductors and chips, unless a company was “building in the United States.”
Chip giant Nvidia pushed back Sunday in response to allegations from Chinese state media that its H20 artificial intelligence chips are a national security risk for China.
Earlier in the day, Reuters reported Yuyuan Tantian, an account affiliated with Chinese state broadcaster CCTV, said in an article published on WeChat that the Nvidia H20 chips are not technologically advanced or environmentally friendly.
“When a type of chip is neither environmentally friendly, nor advanced, nor safe, as consumers, we certainly have the option not to buy it,” the Yuyuan Tantian article reportedly said, adding that the article said chips could achieve functions including “remote shutdown” through a hardware “backdoor.”
In response, a Nvidia spokesperson told CNBC that “cybersecurity is critically important to us. NVIDIA does not have ‘backdoors’ in our chips that would give anyone a remote way to access or control them.”
Nvidia on Tuesday similarly rejected Chinese accusations that its AI chips include a hardware function that could remotely deactivate the chips, also known as a “kill switch.”
Tensions between the U.S. and China on semiconductor export controls have escalated in recent weeks, even after Nvidia resumed sales of its H20 chip to China. Chinese state media has framed the H20 chip as inferior and dangerous compared to Nvidia’s other chips, while the company has defended its chips.
The company’s resumption of its H20 shipments reversed a previous ban on H20 sales that was placed in April by the Trump administration. Nvidia’s H20 chips — a less-advanced semiconductor compared to its flagship H100 and B100 chips, for example — were developed by Nvidia for the Chinese market after initial export restrictions on advanced AI chips in late 2023.
U.S. export controls on some Nvidia chips are rooted in national security concerns that Beijing could use the more advanced chips to gain an advantage broadly in AI, as well as in its military applications.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has supported Trump’s policies while also lobbying for export licenses for the H20 AI chip. Huang has said he wants Nvidia to ship more advanced chips to China, underscoring his outspoken stance that Nvidia’s chips becoming the global standard for AI computing is ultimately better for the U.S. to retain market dominance and influence over global AI development.
China is among Nvidia’s largest markets. Nvidia took a $4.5 billion writedown on its unsold H20 inventory in May and has warned that its topline guidance for the July quarter would have been higher by $8 billion without the chip export restrictions.
Nvidia shares were up 1% to close at $182.70 on Friday and are up 36% this year.
U.S. President Donald Trump and Apple CEO Tim Cook shake hands on the day they present Apple’s announcement of a $100 billion investment in U.S. manufacturing, in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., August 6, 2025.
Jonathan Ernst | Reuters
Apple shares rose 13% this week, its largest weekly gain in more than five years, after CEO Tim Cook appeared with President Donald Trump in the White House on Wednesday.
Shares of the iPhone maker rose 4% to close at $229.35 per share on Friday for the company’s largest weekly gain since July 2020. The week’s move added over $400 billion to Apple’s market cap, which now sits at $3.4 trillion.
At the White House on Wednesday, Cook appeared with Trump to announce Apple’s plans to spend $100 billion on American companies and American parts over the next four years.
Apple’s plans to buy more American chips pleased Trump, who said during the public meeting that because the company was building in the U.S., it would be exempt from future tariffs that could double the price of imported chips.
Investors had worried that some of Trump’s tariffs could substantially hurt Apple’s profitability. Apple warned in July that it expected over $1 billion in tariff costs in the current quarter, assuming no changes.
“Apple and Tim Cook delivered a masterclass in managing uncertainty after months and months of overhang relative to the potential challenges the company could face from tariffs,” JP Morgan analyst Samik Chatterjee wrote on Wednesday. He has an overweight rating on Apple’s stock.
Cook’s successful White House meeting also comes two weeks after Apple reported June quarter earnings in which overall revenue jumped 10% and iPhone sales grew by 13%.