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Ryan Roslansky, CEO of Microsoft’s LinkedIn subsidiary, speaks at a LinkedIn event in San Francisco on Sept. 22, 2016.

David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Influencer marketing has become big business on TikTok and Instagram, where popular creators can make good money by helping brands promote their stuff. Now, LinkedIn wants in the game.

As of last week, LinkedIn is letting advertisers pay to amplify posts from users, including those with sizable followings. Its product, called Thought Leader ads, launched in a limited capacity last year.

The Microsoft-owned business is looking for a jolt, as LinkedIn’s revenue growth has been stuck in single digits since 2022. The company is turning to its membership, which topped 1 billion in November, to help fuel expansion.

Influencer marketing to date has largely been a phenomenon of consumer apps, where shticks and gimmicks can turn internet-savvy creators into celebrities with millions of followers. Almost two-thirds of U.S. social media marketing dollars this year will flow to Instagram parent Meta and TikTok’s Chinese owner ByteDance, with Instagram and TikTok picking up a combined 2 percentage points of additional share by 2026, according to estimates from eMarketer.

LinkedIn, which was launched a year before Facebook, will grab just 4% of the market, equal to $4.5 billion in marketing revenue, eMarketer says, and its share will remain flat over the next two years.

“It takes a long time for ads and ad formats to really take root,” said Max Willens, a senior analyst at eMarketer, referring to LinkedIn’s latest endeavor.

LinkedIn introduced Thought Leader ads last year but with limited use. Brands could only amplify posts from their own employees. Mastercard, for example, promoted posts written by some of its leaders in Singapore, with one receiving over 500 notifications on the first day. LinkedIn has used Thought Leaders ads itself for some posts from operating chief Dan Shapero, but not yet for CEO Ryan Roslansky.

By opening up Thought Leader ads, LinkedIn is letting anyone boost a post as long as the author grants permission. Social media marketer Brendan Gahan is so bullish on the format that he’s focusing much of his efforts on helping companies use Thought Leader ads.

“In an era where brand safety is a big issue, LinkedIn has a leg up, particularly in contrast to Twitter,” said Gahan, who started an agency last year called Creator Authority, referring to the social media platform now known as X.

X, formerly Twitter, being overrun by 'trolls and lunatics,' Wikipedia founder says

X lost some leaders working on brand safety last year, just as the Elon Musk-owned platform was seeing a surge in hate speech on the app.

LinkedIn has long been an effective site for advertisers because members list their employment details, making it easy for brands to target ads to relevant audiences. Advertising skews toward business-focused products like software and computer infrastructure, though automakers, universities and banks also use the network to reach potential customers.

“If you’re looking to sell a high-end B2B product, and you know the buying group is a CFO and someone in finance and like someone in HR, we can literally put ads in front of those specific people on LinkedIn, because the first-party data is so strong,” Roslansky said at a conference in late 2022.

Thought Leader ads came about after employees saw marketing clients promoting screenshots of other users’ content. Since turning on the offering last fall, the ads have yielded higher engagement than regular ads that run with images, said Abhishek Shrivastava, a LinkedIn vice president of product management.

“Humanizing your brand is critical for B2B and has been underused in that space,” said Shrivastava, adding that clients are very excited about it.

It might not be cheap. Racking up a thousand ad impressions generally costs more on LinkedIn than on Instagram or TikTok, partly because the company charges more for advertisers to reach its more affluent user base. Shrivastava said that rather than comparing the costs to other sites, brands will look at the sales and business leads they get from running ads.

For months, project management software startup ClickUp has been paying to promote LinkedIn posts from its own executives. Chris Cunningham, head of social marketing at the company, said traditional ads on LinkedIn can sometimes be repetitive and generic, and he’s eager to see how promoted posts will perform when influencers get involved.

On other social networks, ClickUp has found more success promoting posts from creators than with standard ads, Cunningham said. Plus, he said, “it’s super easy.”

Betsy Hindman, a marketer in Tennessee who helps companies make the most of their LinkedIn presence, said a brand ambassador with an audience can have a bigger impact than a typical ad.

“It’s part of a full end-to-end strategy that includes warming people up along the way with whatever type of content they respond to,” she said.

Building up a roster of creators will likely take time. Some influencers are represented by agencies, and LinkedIn’s Campaign Manager advertising system doesn’t have an automatic process for connecting media buyers with agencies.

“That’s a direction we are exploring,” Shrivastava said.

More data will soon be available to advertisers. Starting in a few weeks, LinkedIn members will be able to look up any company’s collection of ads and see its Thought Leader ads, a spokesperson said. That could help advertisers see what works best.

One potential boon for LinkedIn rests with the fate of TikTok. The app faces a possible ban in the U.S. after the House of Representatives passed legislation last month that would force ByteDance to sell it within six months. Momentum has since slowed, though Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., urged lawmakers to take action on the matter earlier this week.

Willens from eMarketer said agencies are keeping an eye on the issue, but said “nobody feels there’s an imminent threat.”

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TikTok is one of the biggest platforms for free speech that I've ever seen, says Marc D'Amelio

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Broadcom tumbles 11% despite blockbuster earnings as ‘AI angst’ weighs on Oracle, Nvidia

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Broadcom tumbles 11% despite blockbuster earnings as 'AI angst' weighs on Oracle, Nvidia

Broadcom CEO Hock Tan.

Lucas Jackson | Reuters

Broadcom’s quarterly results and guidance sailed past Wall Street estimates. It didn’t matter.

The chipmaker’s shares plummeted 11% on Friday, on pace for their worst day since January, as investors ran for the exits on the artificial intelligence trade. Oracle dropped 4% a day after plunging 10% following its earnings report.

AI has been the driver for the stock market and the broader economy this year, so any negative sentiment has potentially far-reaching consequences. The Nasdaq on Friday fell about 1.4%, and the S&P 500 declined declined by nearly 1%.

The companies getting hit the hardest are the ones most closely tied to AI infrastructure, which has been booming as hyperscalers build out their data centers to try and meet what they describe as insatiable demand for compute-intensive AI services. Broadcom makes custom chips for many of the the largest tech companies, and saw its market cap about double each of the past two years before rallying again in 2025.

“This stock is up 75-80% year to date. You’re seeing a little bit of a pullback,” Vijay Rakesh, an analyst at Mizuho, told CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street” on Friday. “We would be buyers on this pullback.”

Mizuho raised its price target on the stock to $450 from $435. It was trading below $364 as of Friday afternoon.

“This is still where the growth is,” Rakesh said. “They are still the big supplier to Google on their entire hardware stack, to Meta, to Anthropic and even OpenAI coming down the road.”

Broadcom reported revenue growth of 28% during the quarter, largely due to a 74% increase in AI chip sales, to a total of $18.02 billion, topping the $17.49 billion average analyst estimate, according to LSEG. Adjusted earnings per share of $1.95 adjusted topped the $1.86 average estimate.

HSBC: There could be much more upside to Broadcom's AI backlog

CEO Hock Tan said Broadcom expects AI chip sales this quarter to double from a year earlier to $8.2 billion, both from custom AI chips as well as semiconductors for AI networking.

One concern among investors is that margins are coming down, at least in the short term, due to higher upfront costs. CFO Kirsten Spears said on the earnings call that “gross margins will be lower” for some of Broadcom’s AI chip systems because the company will have to buy more parts to produce the server racks.

Broadcom also said it had a $73 billion backlog of AI orders over the next 18 months. Part of that is from $21 billion of orders from Anthropic, which the company revealed as a key customer on Thursday.

While OpenAI has been a highly touted customer following a multibillion-dollar agreement announced in October, Tan doused some hope for the deal, telling investors late Thursday that, “We do not expect much in ’26.”

Bernstein analyst Stacy Rasgon said in a note on Friday that “AI angst” was driving Broadcom’s shares lower.

“Frankly we aren’t sure what else one could desire as the company’s AI story continues to not only overdeliver but is doing it at an accelerating rate,” Rasgon, who recommends buying the stock and raised his price target, wrote in the note.

Oracle has been facing more extreme skepticism. The stock is now down more than 40% from its record reached in September. The company beat on earnings but missed on revenue in its report on Wednesday, and investors were disappointed they didn’t get more detail on how Oracle will finance its massive buildout that so far has required mounds of debt.

CoreWeave, which is investing in data centers to offer cloud-based AI services, sank 9% on Friday and has lost more than half its value since peaking in June.

WATCH: Mizuho raises price target on Broadcom

Here’s why Mizuho raised its price target on Broadcom

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Rivian’s AI, autonomy impress Wall Street, but EV and capital concerns remain

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Rivian's AI, autonomy impress Wall Street, but EV and capital concerns remain

Rivian CEO RJ Scaringe at the company’s first “Autonomy and AI Day” on Dec. 11, 2025, in Palo Alto, California.

Lora Kolodny | CNBC

Rivian Automotive impressed Wall Street on Thursday with its plans for artificial intelligence, automation and an internally developed silicon chip, but significant challenges involving demand and capital remain for the electric vehicle maker.

Despite Wall Street analysts expressing some optimism following Rivian’s first “Autonomy and AI Day,” the company’s stock fell 6.1% to close Thursday at $16.43 per share. But shares recovered during intraday trading Friday and were up more than 15%.

While the event didn’t cause many analysts to change ratings or price targets, Needham raised its price target on Rivian by 64% to $23 per share. The firm did so on the tech announcements and potential for future licensing deals, as well as higher-than-consensus expectations on deliveries next year of the company’s new midsize R2 SUV.

“RIVN signaled a shift from an [automaker] adopting autonomy to one leveraging AI to build end-to-end autonomy,” Needham analyst Chris Pierce said in a Friday investor note.

The company’s stock had ramped up heading into the AI Day, but many analysts believed the announcements from the event were already “priced in.” Shares also fell as OpenAI made its own AI announcement Thursday, revealing its most advanced model yet.

“We attended Rivian’s Autonomy & AI Day yesterday in Palo Alto and came away mostly impressed with the strategic direction outlined by management,” Deutsche Bank analyst Edison Yu said Friday in an investor note. “However, the stock’s weakness seems warranted given the run-up since earnings and lack of a major AI partnership/deal announcement.”

Rivian’s announcements included a proprietary chip, RAP1, designed for “physical AI,” namely autonomous driving; an evolved software architecture, or “brains” of the vehicle; a new AI assistant; and a roadmap for getting to “personal L4,” or fully self-driving personally owned vehicles.

The latter begins later this month with an update involving its hands-free driving system, followed by plans to continue to expand capabilities until vehicles reach full autonomy in the years ahead. Rivian did not disclose a timeframe for the full autonomy or potential robotaxi fleet autonomous vehicles.

Rivian CEO RJ Scaringe on new AI tech, autonomous driving and more

Leading up to the event, Rivian shares were up more than 30% to $17.50. Despite those gains, shares remain well off the levels of the company’s IPO of $78 per share in 2021.

Barclays analyst Dan Levy and others said while Rivian’s technology announcements, including the surprise proprietary chip, were impressive, the company remains a “show me” story amid more challenging market conditions.

“With RIVN facing a tougher path to breakeven on core vehicle sales alone, we believe with enhanced AV/AI capabilities RIVN is further paving the path to additional software/service revenues, which would be margin accretive,” Levy said Friday in an investor note. “To be clear, there is certainly a ‘show me’ element for RIVN on its capabilities.”

Challenges include slumping EV demand following the end of up to $7,500 tax credits in September, lack of other support under the Trump administration and internal struggles at the company involving products and capital.

Several analysts noted the adoption of advanced driver assistance systems remains low across the industry, even at U.S. EV leader Tesla, and Rivian is continuing to play catch up to other companies that have offered such systems for years.

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Shares of “pure EV” plays Tesla, Rivian and Lucid in 2025.

Rivian founder and CEO RJ Scaringe and other executives argued that the company’s vertical integration of in-house capabilities including software, AI, vehicle platforms and other technologies will allow the automaker to be more efficient, quicker and better than others.

“AI is enabling us to create technology and customer experiences at a rate that is completely different from what we’ve seen in the past,” Scaringe said during the event.

Such arguments, as well as the automaker’s prior $5.8 billion joint venture software deal with Volkswagen, have led Wall Street to price Rivian’s software business higher than its core of producing and selling EVs, given market conditions.

A $12 price target for Rivian shares from Morgan Stanley, which recently downgraded the company to underweight, includes $7 for software and services and $5 for its core automotive business. Several analysts added that Rivian might be able to license or sell its newest technologies, including chips.

“RIVN is developing a suite of hardware and software offerings to remain competitive in an Auto 2.0 world. However, several risks remain around demand, potentially limiting data capture needed to reach higher levels of autonomy,” Morgan Stanley’s Andrew Percoco said in a Friday note.

Morgan Stanley raised concerns about autonomy adoption rates, lackluster EV demand ahead of Rivian’s new “R2” vehicle next year and a prolonged path to profitability as reasoning for the rating confirmation.

Rivian R2 is showcased at the company’s first Autonomy and AI Day showcasing developments in self-driving technology, in Palo Alto, California, U.S., Dec. 11, 2025.

Carlos Barria | Reuters

RBC Capital Markets analyst Tom Narayan agreed: “The advancements enhance Rivian’s product offering but do not address ongoing concerns around liquidity and R2/R3 profitability.”

Rivian continues to lose billions of dollars annually, despite significant cost reductions and gains in software revenue thanks to its deal with VW.

Rivian ended the third quarter with $7.7 billion in total liquidity, including nearly $7.1 billion in cash, cash equivalents and short-term investments that Scaringe has said position the company “really well” for the R2 launch.

The R2 midsize SUV is crucial for Rivian — especially since it’s a major market in the U.S. With expectations of a $45,000 starting price, it is anticipated to broaden Rivian’s customer base and be a proof-point for the company’s efforts regarding profitability and cost savings.

Rivian’s current R1 pickup truck and SUV consumer models start at more than $70,000. It also builds electric delivery vans, largely for its biggest shareholder Amazon, that start around $80,000.

“Profitability pressure will likely intensify as Rivian rolls out its ~$45K R2 platform in the highly competitive mid-size SUV segment,” Narayan said. “While targeting a lower price point could increase market reach, the R1 platform’s struggles with profitability despite being nearly double the price of the R2 raise.”

Shares of Rivian, with a $22.5 billion market cap, are rated hold with a $15.43 per share price target, according to average ratings and estimates compiled by FactSet.

— CNBC’s Michael Bloom contributed to this report.

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Broadcom earnings, Lululemon CEO steps down, ‘fibermaxxing’ and more in Morning Squawk

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Broadcom earnings, Lululemon CEO steps down, 'fibermaxxing' and more in Morning Squawk

FILE PHOTO: A Broadcom logo and a computer motherboard appear in this illustration taken August 25, 2025.

Dado Ruvic | Reuters

This is CNBC’s Morning Squawk newsletter. Subscribe here to receive future editions in your inbox.

Here are five key things investors need to know to start the trading day:

1. Chip types

The S&P 500 and Dow Jones Industrial Average surged to new closing highs yesterday as investors dove into old-economy and blue-chip stocks. The Nasdaq Composite sat out of the rally, as an 11% drop in shares of Oracle catalyzed the latest wave of worry about artificial intelligence spending.

Here’s what to know:

  • Oracle shares snapped a seven-day win streak and notched their worst day since January, as the company’s earnings left traders questioning the company’s AI investments.
  • That left a bad taste in investors’ mouths on AI more broadly, with key players such as Nvidia, CoreWeave and Micron also sliding in Thursday’s session.
  • But as AI stocks faltered, investors put money to work in more cyclical names like financial institutions and insurance providers.
  • This morning, shares of Broadcom are down nearly 6% before the bell despite the company beating expectations on both lines yesterday.
  • The semiconductor company told investors that it expects its current-quarter AI chip sales to double from a year ago. It also revealed that its mystery $10 billion customer was Anthropic.
  • Hundreds of miles from Wall Street, President Donald Trump last night signed an executive order establishing a single national regulation standard for AI that curbs states’ regulatory power.
  • Follow live markets updates here.

2. Turning a new leaf

A customer shops in a Lululemon store on April 03, 2025 in Miami Beach, Florida. 

Joe Raedle | Getty Images

Another day, another CEO departure: Lululemon announced yesterday that CEO Calvin McDonald will step down at the end of January. He will be replaced in the interim by two executives while the Canadian retailer searches for a permanent successor.

Lululemon reported better-than-expected earnings for the third quarter, but, as CNBC’s Gabrielle Fonrouge notes, the company has been underperforming for more than a year. Shares of the athleisure retailer are up more than 9% this morning.

Costco also surpassed Wall Street’s forecasts for its first quarter, boosted in part by e-commerce growth. The warehouse club said Black Friday was a record-breaking day for its digital business.

3. Wish upon a bot

Disney CEO Bob Iger and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman appearing on CNBC on Dec. 11th, 2025.

CNBC

Mickey Mouse, meet ChatGPT. Disney announced a $1 billion equity investment in OpenAI yesterday. Under the agreement, users on OpenAI’s Sora video platform will be able to make content that features the entertainment giant’s copyrighted material — including more than 200 characters across the Disney universe.

Disney CEO Bob Iger told CNBC that the deal gives the company “a way in” to AI and will help it further reach younger consumers. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said there will be limits on how Disney characters can be used in Sora videos.

Yesterday also marked OpenAI’s 10th anniversary. CNBC’s MacKenzie Sigalos takes you through the company’s transformation from a small, nonprofit research lab to the booming business it is today.

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4. Tanking plans

A satellite image shows the very large crude carrier (VLCC) Skipper, which British maritime risk management group Vanguard said was believed to have been seized on December 10, as well as another vessel, off Port Jose, Venezuela, November 18, 2025.

Planet Labs | Reuters

After the U.S. seized a tanker off Venezuela’s coast, a White House official told CNBC yesterday that Trump is willing to do it again. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt also said that the tanker will be taken to a U.S. port where the oil it carried will be seized.

CNBC’s Lori Ann LaRocco found that the tanker in question, identified as the “Skipper,” had hid its location on multiple occasions since last year. Data suggests it has carried sanctioned oil from Iran and Venezuela since 2022.

5. Fiber optics

Smartfood Fiber Pop and Sun Chips Fiber snacks.

Source: Pepsico

Mover over, protein. Fiber is increasingly stealing the spotlight as shoppers focus on their gut health.

Data shows 22% of consumers listed high fiber content as a top-three factor when shopping, compared with 17% four years ago. On social media, the kids are calling it “fibermaxxing.”

As a result, companies such as Coca-Cola and Nestlé are rolling out fiber-focused drinks, CNBC’s Laya Neelakandan reports. PepsiCo also told CNBC that it’s planning to launch high-fiber versions of Smartfood and SunChips next year.

The Daily Dividend

Here are some stories we’d recommend making time for this weekend:

CNBC’s Sean Conlon, Jordan Novet, Tasmin Lockwood, Jennifer Elias, Kif Leswing, MacKenzie Sigalos, Gabrielle Fonrouge, Melissa Repko, Ashley Capoot, Kevin Breuninger, Spencer Kimball, Lori Ann LaRocco, Justin Papp, Eamon Javers and Laya Neelakandan contributed to this report. Josephine Rozzelle edited this edition.

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