Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, attends the 54th annual meeting of the World Economic Forum, in Davos, Switzerland, January 18, 2024 (L), and Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos speaks during the UN Climate Change Conference (COP26) in Glasgow, Scotland, Britain, November 2, 2021.
Reuters
Leaders of major technology companies congratulated President-elect Donald Trump and Vice President-elect JD Vance on their victory in the U.S. presidential election Wednesday.
The messages were similar, with CEOs remarking that they wish Trump success when he returns to the Oval Office, and look forward to working with his administration.
Amazon founder and executive chairman Jeff Bezos celebrated Trump’s win in a post on X, calling it an “extraordinary political comeback and decisive victory.”
Bezos, who also owns The Washington Post and founded space company Blue Origin, has had a rocky relationship with Trump and was a frequent target of the former president during his first term. Trump repeatedly took aim at Bezos’ ownership of the Post, Amazon’s tax record and its relationship with the Postal Service. Bezos also took swings at Trump, remarking in a 2015 social media post, “#sendDonaldtospace.” Bezos recently struck a more conciliatory tone and in July praised Trump for his “courage under literal fire” following the attempted assassination of Trump at a Pennsylvania rally that month. Bezos has posted twice on X this year, with both posts mentioning Trump.
Andy Jassy, who took the helm from Bezos when he stepped down as Amazon’s CEO in 2021, also extended his congratulations to Trump.
“Congratulations to President-elect @realDonaldTrump on a hard-fought victory,” Jassy wrote in a post on X. “We look forward to working with you and your administration on issues important to our customers, employees, communities, and country.”
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said in a post on X that he hopes Trump will see “huge success in the job.” In a follow up post, he wrote, “it is critically important that the US maintains its lead in developing AI with democratic values.”
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg called Trump’s election win a “decisive victory” and said he looked forward to forward to working with the Trump administration. “We have great opportunities ahead of us as a country,” Zuckerberg wrote in a post on Threads, Meta’s rival to Elon Musk’s X app. The two men have also had a rocky relationship at times. In 2021, Facebook banned Trump for two years shortly after the Jan. 6 insurrection.
Musk, who also runs electric vehicle maker Tesla, space exploration company SpaceX, and brain tech startup Neuralink, also unsurprisingly cheered Trump’s win.
Musk has been a key ally for Trump in his campaign for the White House, with the former president promising prior to his election to appoint Musk as the head of a government efficiency commission. Musk also contributed nearly $75 million to America PAC, a pro-Trump super political action committee that he established earlier in the year. Tesla shares rallied more than 13% on Wednesday afternoon as investors were optimistic that a Trump win would benefit the vehicle maker.
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google parent Alphabet, also congratulated Trump on his victory and said he’s committed to working with the president-elect’s administration.
Microsoft CEO Sundar Pichai said: “Congratulations President Trump, we’re looking forward to engaging with you and your administration to drive innovation forward that creates new growth and opportunity for the United States and the world.”
Cisco founder and CEO Chuck Robbins wrote in a post on X that the company looks forward to working with Trump and Congress on policies around “connectivity, innovation, cybersecurity, and more.”
Box CEO Aaron Levie also sent his good wishes to Trump. He wrote in a post on X, “Wild ride. Congrats to @realDonaldTrump on becoming President again. What’s great about America is that we’re on a rocket ship right now and can keep accelerating with the right policies and execution.”
Michael Dell, CEO and chairman of Dell Technologies, added his own congratulations in a post on X.
George Kurtz, co-founder and CEO of CrowdStrike Holdings Inc., during a Bloomberg Technology television interview at the RSA Conference in San Francisco on April 26, 2023.
David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images
CrowdStrike shares dropped nearly 9% in extended trading on Tuesday after the cybersecurity software provider issued disappointing earnings guidance.
Here’s what the company reported compared to LSEG estimates:
Earnings per share: $1.03. The number doesn’t to appear to be comparable to analysts’ estimates.
Revenue: $1.06 billion vs. $1.03 billion
Revenue increased 25% from $845.3 million a year earlier, and the company posted a net loss of $92.3 billion, or 37 cents per share. In the year-ago period, the company posted net income of $53.7 million, or 22 cents per share.
For the year, CrowdStrike said it expects earnings, excluding some items, to range between $3.33 and $3.45 per share, falling short of the $4.42 expected by analysts polled by LSEG. First-quarter earnings are expected to be between 64 cents and 66 cents per share, versus the average estimate of 95 cents.
Despite the after-hours drop, CrowdStrike topped some metrics from Wall Street. The company posted $4.24 billion in annual recurring revenue, reflecting 23% growth. That topped the $4.21 billion estimate from analysts surveyed by StreetAccount and included $224 million in net annual recurring revenue.
Revenue guidance was roughly in line with estimates. CrowdStrike said it expects revenue of between $4.74 billion and $4.81 billion for the year, versus an LSEG estimate of $4.77 billion.
The earnings release comes almost eight months after a technology update from the company led to a global IT outage that grounded flights, disrupted businesses and led to class action lawsuits.
CEO George Kurtz said in the press release that artificial intelligence is becoming more important in stopping cyberattacks.
“As businesses of all sizes rapidly adopt AI, stopping the breach necessitates cybersecurity’s AI-native platform,” Kurtz said.
Todd McKinnon, CEO of Okta Inc., smiles during a Bloomberg Technology television interview in San Francisco on April 4, 2022.
David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Okta shares soared 22% on Tuesday after the cloud-based identity management company delivered strong fourth-quarter earnings and beat estimates on guidance.
The move put the stock on pace for its best day in more than a year.
Okta posted adjusted earnings late Monday of 78 cents per share, while revenue increased 13% from a year earlier to $682 million. That beat the average analyst estimates of 73 cents per share in earnings and $669.6 million in revenue, according to LSEG.
First-quarter revenue should come in between $678 million and $680 million, which also topped estimates.
On the company’s earnings call, CEO Todd McKinnon called it a “blowout quarter” as bookings topped $1 billion in a single period for the first time.
“We’re excited about the momentum we’ve built going into FY 2026 and are taking the right steps to advance our position as the leader in the identity market,” McKinnon said. “More and more customers are looking to consolidate their disparate and ineffective identity systems, and Okta is there to meet them with the most comprehensive identity security platform in the market today,” McKinnon added.
Okta allows companies to manage employee access or devices by providing tools such as single sign-on and multifactor authentication. Shares have rallied about 35% this year, including Tuesday’s pop, after slumping 13% in 2024. In late 2023, Okta suffered a high-profile data breach that gave access to client files through a support system.
Some Wall Street firms turned more positive on the stock after the latest results, with both D.A. Davidson and Mizuho upgrading their ratings. D.A. Davidson called the likelihood of double-digit growth “durable” as the company shows signs of stabilization.
Mizuho’s Gregg Moskowitz said the firm “underestimated” the upside to committed remaining performance obligations, or subscription backlog that the company expects to recognize as revenue over the next year.
“More broadly, OKTA continues to be a clear leader in the critically important identity management market,” Moskowitz wrote. “And we now have a higher confidence level that OKTA will increasingly benefit from its group of newer products that have already begun to drive a meaningful contribution.”
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co.‘s $100 billion commitment to expand manufacturing in the U.S. is “great news,” Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon told CNBC on Tuesday, adding it helps with diversification of chipmaking locations.
Amon also addressed U.S President Donald Trump’s tariff policy, suggesting longer term technology trends would outweigh any short term uncertainty.
Trump announced on Monday that TSMC would invest $100 billion in the U.S. which would go toward building more chip fabrication plants in Arizona. TSMC is the world’s largest semiconductor manufacturer and supplies chips to the likes of Qualcomm, Apple and Nvidia.
The U.S., under leadership of both Trump and former President Joe Biden, has sought to bring more cutting-edge chip manufacturing to American soil on the grounds that it is a matter of national and economic security to have these advanced technologies made closer to home.
Many in the technology industry have backed these plans, including Qualcomm.
“Look, this is great news,” Amon said. “It shows that semiconductors are important. It’s going to be important for … the economy. Economic security means access to semiconductors. More manufacturing is music to our ears.”
Amon said that some of Qualcomm’s chips are already manufactured in TSMC’s existing plants in Arizona and in the future, the company will get more semiconductors made in the U.S.
“TSMC is a great supplier of manufacturing for Qualcomm. They have a facility in Arizona. We already have chips built in Arizona. The more capacity that they put we’re going to use it, same way we’ve been using in Taiwan, we’re going to use it in other locations,” Amon said.
Global companies are also digesting the imposition of tariffs by the U.S. on Mexico and Canada as well as additional duties on China.
Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon speaks at the Computex forum in Taipei, Taiwan, June 3, 2024.
Ann Wang | Reuters
Amon said it’s currently difficult to predict the impact on Qualcomm from the tariffs.
“It’s hard to tell because you don’t know exactly how this is going to go. The interesting thing is we’re big exporters of chips. We’re not an importer of chips … Chips are going to devices. They’re made all over the world, and it’s hard to really know what is happening,” Amon said.
“We’re just is going to navigate based on whatever the outcome is.”
The Qualcomm CEO said there are a number of key technology trends that are likely to support the U.S. giant’s business in the long term, over the short term tariff uncertainty.
We are right at the “beginning of a significant upgrade for AI smartphones. We’re seeing PCs changing to AI PCs. Cars are becoming computers. That’s what’s driving our business, not necessarily what we’re going to see in the short term,” Amon said.