The logo of U.S. software company Palantir Technologies is seen in Davos, Switzerland Januar 22, 2020.
Arnd Wiegmann | Reuters
Shares of Palantir popped more than 25% Tuesday, a day after the company released fourth-quarter earnings that surpassed analysts’ expectations for revenue and showed strong demand for its artificial intelligence offerings.
Palantir, known for its defense and intelligence work with the U.S. government, reported that revenue in the quarter increased 20% to $608.4 million, up from the $602.4 million expected by Wall Street. Palantir said it expects to report between $612 million and $616 million in revenue during its first quarter, shy of the $617 million analysts were anticipating.
In a letter to shareholders, CEO Alex Karp said demand for large language models in the U.S. “continues to be unrelenting.” Palantir has been scaling its Artificial Intelligence Platform, or AIP, and Karp said the company carried out nearly 600 pilots with the technology last year.
Analysts at Citi upgraded Palantir shares to neutral from sell and raised their target price from $10 to $20. They said Palantir delivered a “stronger-than-expected” fourth quarter driven by “breakthrough momentum” in the company’s commercial unit, but they still have some reservations about its conservative full-year guidance for its non-U.S. commercial sectors.
“We see these risks balanced by potential call options on new AI Monetization (AIP) and improving U.S. Government contracts into 2024,” the analysts wrote in a note Tuesday.
Jefferies analysts also upgraded the stock and said Palantir delivered an “impressive” quarter led in part by its commercial growth in the U.S.
Jefferies analysts said they had downgraded shares of Palantir at the beginning of the year because they believed it would take time for its AI platform to have a real impact, but now, they think the company is at an “inflection point.”
“We are impressed with AI Platform (AIP) ramping faster than our initial expectations and believe it’s appropriate to upgrade shares to reflect the momentum,” the analysts wrote in a Tuesday note. “We were wrong, but we’re not stubborn.”
However, the Jefferies analysts said they still have some concerns about Palantir’s valuation since shares are trading at a “23% premium to the large cap average,” so the analysts will “remain on the sidelines.”
Bank of America analysts reiterated their buy rating on the stock and said that while AIP is still in its early days, it is already impacting the company in a “meaningful way.” The analysts said they expect Palantir’s momentum with AI to continue, and they also see “significant opportunities” for the company’s software within the U.S. government.
“We think this remarkable growth is a sign of Palantir’s unique position as an enabler of AI-powered data-driven decision-making in a tangible, accessible, and operational way,” the analysts wrote Tuesday.
D-Wave Quantum CEO Alan Baratz said Nvidia’s Jensen Huang is “dead wrong” about quantum computing after comments from the head of the chip giant spooked Wall Street on Wednesday.
Huang was asked Tuesday about Nvidia’s strategy for quantum computing. He said Nvidia could make conventional chips that are needed alongside quantum computing chips, but that those computers would need 1 million times the number of quantum processing units, called qubits, that they currently have.
Getting “very useful quantum computers” to market could take 15 to 30 years, Huang told analysts.
Huang’s remarks sent stocks in the nascent industry slumping, with D-Wave plunging 36% on Wednesday.
“The reason he’s wrong is that we at D-Wave are commercial today,” Baratz told CNBC’s Deirdre Bosa on “The Exchange.” Baratz said companies including Mastercard and Japan’s NTT Docomo “are using our quantum computers today in production to benefit their business operations.”
“Not 30 years from now, not 20 years from now, not 15 years from now,” Baratz said. “But right now today.”
D-Wave’s revenue is still minimal. Sales in the latest quarter fell 27% to $1.9 million from $2.6 million a year earlier.
Quantum computing promises to solve problems that are difficult for current processors, such as decoding encryption, generating random numbers and large-scale simulations. Technologists have been working on it for decades, and companies including Nvidia, Microsoft and IBM are pursuing it today, alongside researchers at startups and universities.
Jensen Huang, co-founder and chief executive officer of Nvidia Corp., speaks while holding a Project Digits computer during the 2025 CES event in Las Vegas, Nevada, US, on Monday, Jan. 6, 2025. Huang announced a raft of new chips, software and services, aiming to stay at the forefront of artificial intelligence computing. Photographer: Bridget Bennett/Bloomberg via Getty Images
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D-Wave was among a number of companies that enjoyed a revival of interest from investors in December, when Google announced a breakthrough in its own research. Google said it had completed a 100 qubit chip, the second of six steps in its strategy to build a quantum system with 1 million qubits.
D-Wave shares soared 178% in December after popping 185% the month prior. Quantum company Rigetti Computing, which plummeted 45% on Wednesday, quintupled in value last month. IonQ dropped 39% on Wednesday. The stock rose 14% in December following a 143% rally in November.
Baratz acknowledged that one approach to quantum computing, called gate-based, may be decades away. But he said uses an annealing approach, which can be deployed now.
While Huang’s “comments may not be totally off-base for gate model quantum computers, well, they are 100% off base for annealing quantum computers,” Baratz said.
Nvidia declined to comment.
Even after Wednesday’s slide, D-Wave shares are up about 600% in the last year, giving the company a market cap of $1.6 billion.
Quantum computing has also been boosted by investor interest in artificial intelligence, the technology that’s led to surging demand for Nvidia’s graphics processing units, which use conventional transistors instead of qubits. Nvidia’s market cap has increased by 168% in the past year to $3.4 trillion.
Baratz said D-Wave systems can solve problems beyond the capabilities of the fastest Nvidia-equipped systems.
“l’ll be happy to meet with Jensen any time, any place, to help fill in these gaps for him,” Baratz said.
A sign is posted in front of the eBay headquarters in San Jose, California.
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Shares of eBay soared 8% Wednesday as Meta said it will allow some listings to show up on Facebook Marketplace, its popular platform connecting consumers for local item pickups and more.
EBay stock reached its highest level since November 2021.
The rollout will begin with a test in Germany, France and the United States, where buyers will be able to view listings directly on Marketplace and complete the rest of their transactions on eBay, Meta said in a release.
The partnership could provide a boost to eBay’s marketplace business, which has struggled to compete with e-commerce rivals like Amazon, Walmart, Temu and even Facebook’s own marketplace platform that lets users buy and sell items.
EBay has recently embraced niche categories like collectibles and luxury goods to try and keep buyers and sellers returning to its site. CEO Jamie Iannone told CNBC in an October interview that shoppers were coming to the site, known for its used and refurbished goods, as they sought out discounts amid a rocky macroeconomic environment.
Meta’s move is an attempt to appease the European Commission, the executive body of the European Union, after the regulator fined the company 797 million euros ($821 million) in November for tying its Marketplace product to the main Facebook app.
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At the time, the Commission said that Meta’s bundling of Marketplace with Facebook could mean competitors are effectively “foreclosed” given the distribution reach of the platform. Facebook counts more than 3 billion users globally.
The Commission also said that Meta imposes “unfair trading conditions” on other online classified ads service providers who advertise on its platforms, especially Facebook and Instagram. It added that these conditions allow Meta to use data generated from other advertisers to benefit Marketplace.
Meta appealed the ruling at the time, saying that it “ignores the realities of the thriving European market for online classified listing services.”
“While we disagree with and continue to appeal the European Commission’s decision on Facebook Marketplace, we are working quickly and constructively to build a solution which addresses the points raised,” the company said Wednesday.
EBay touted its integration with Facebook Marketplace as a way for the e-commerce site to “increase exposure to our sellers’ listings, on and off eBay, as part of our strategy to engage buyers and deepen customer loyalty.”
Facebook in 2023 announced a similar partnership with Amazon that lets users browse and purchase products without leaving the app.
An Amazon employee works to fulfill same-day orders during Cyber Monday, one of the company’s busiest days, at an Amazon fulfillment center in Orlando, Florida, on Dec. 2, 2024.
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Amazon warehouse workers at a site in North Carolina will vote next month on whether to join a union, setting the stage for the company’s latest labor battle.
Workers at the Garner, North Carolina, facility will cast their ballots from Feb. 10 to Feb. 15, according to a Tuesday post on X by Carolina Amazonians United for Solidarity & Empowerment, the group seeking to organize staffers. Representatives from Amazon and the National Labor Relations Board didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.
Known as CAUSE, the grassroots group led by current and former employees has been working to organize Amazon employees at the warehouse, which is located in a suburb about 10 miles south of Raleigh, for the past three years.
If the election is successful, the warehouse, known as RDU1, would be only the second Amazon site in the U.S. to unionize. Workers at Amazon’s largest warehouse in New York City voted to join the Amazon Labor Union in 2022, but the group struggled to negotiate a contract with Amazon, and last June, the ALU voted to affiliate with the Teamsters.
A handful of union elections were held at Amazon warehouses in the U.S. in recent years but employees have either rejected unionization or the results continue to be disputed in lengthy court battles. Last November, a federal labor judge ordered a third rerun election at an Amazon warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama, after ruling the company improperly interfered in the vote.
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CAUSE filed for a union election last month, saying in a press release that 30% of workers at the North Carolina site signed union authorization cards, which is the necessary threshold to trigger an NLRB vote. Organizers are seeking to boost wages and improve working conditions.
The union filing comes after Amazon delivery and warehouse workers went on strike at nine facilities last month to push the company to come to the bargaining table, according to the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, which represents the employees. The action was intended to snarl Amazon’s operations during the busiest holiday shopping period of the year, referred to as peak season. An Amazon representative told Reuters the company expected to see a limited impact on deliveries from the strike.