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A sign is posted in front of a Broadcom office in San Jose, California, on Dec. 12, 2024.

Justin Sullivan | Getty Images

Shares of Broadcom popped more than 21% Friday morning, pushing the company’s market cap beyond $1 trillion for the first time. It will be Broadcom’s best trading day on record if the move holds until the closing bell.

The move comes after the company reported fourth-quarter results that beat Wall Street’s expectations for earnings and showed strong artificial intelligence revenue growth.

Broadcom reported $14.05 billion in revenue for the fourth quarter, up 51% year over year but shy of the $14.09 billion expected by analysts according to LSEG. In Broadcom’s semiconductor solutions group, which includes its AI chips, revenue increased 12% to $8.23 billion from $8.03 billion a year ago.

The company said AI revenue jumped 220% for the year to $12.2 billion. The stock popped in after-hours trading Thursday when Broadcom CEO Hock Tan said the company is developing custom AI chips with large cloud customers.

Broadcom’s net income came in at $4.32 billion, or 90 cents per share, up 23% from $3.52 billion, or 83 cents per share, in the same quarter a year earlier.

Bernstein analysts wrote in a Friday note that Tan might look good in a leather jacket, a nod to Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang’s signature style. They said there were a lot of nerves ahead of Thursday’s results, but Broadcom’s fourth-quarter earnings were “decent” and they were encouraged by management’s near-term and longer-term vision for AI.

The analysts raised their price target on the stock to $250 from $195.

“Overall the AI story seems to really be coming into its own,” the analysts wrote.

Analysts at Bank of America reiterated their buy rating on the stock, in part because of its “surging AI opportunity.” They said Broadcom currently dominates the market for custom chips for internal workloads, but they cautioned that there is some risk from the “stiff competition against NVDA’s stronghold in merchant silicon and enterprise customers.”

Morgan Stanley analysts said Broadcom’s commentary around AI will likely add to long-term enthusiasm around the company, which they expect will continue to build. They said Broadcom remains “one of the most compelling ways to play AI semis” over the next two to three years.

“Overall, the quarter itself will provide a relief vs. low nearer term expectations, and the longer term commentary around AI will stoke enthusiasm for custom AI chip longer term prospects — enthusiasm that was already at a fever pitch,” the analysts wrote in a Friday note.

— CNBC’s Michael Bloom and Kif Leswing contributed to this report.

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Joby lawsuit accuses air taxi rival Archer of using stolen information to ‘one-up’ deal

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Joby lawsuit accuses air taxi rival Archer of using stolen information to 'one-up' deal

An electric air taxi by Joby Aviation flies near the Downtown Manhattan Heliport in Manhattan, New York City, U.S., November 12, 2023.

Roselle Chen | Reuters

Air taxi maker Joby Aviation in a new lawsuit accused competitor Archer Aviation of using stolen information by a former employee to “one-up” a partnership deal with a real estate developer.

“This is corporate espionage, planned and premeditated,” Joby said in the lawsuit filed Wednesday in a California Superior Court in Santa Cruz, where the company is based.

Archer and Joby did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment.

The lawsuit alleges that former U.S. state and local policy lead, George Kivork, downloaded dozens of files and sent some content to his personal email two days before he resigned in July to take a job at Archer, which had recruited him.

By August, Joby said a partner that worked with Kivork said it had been approached by Archer with a “more lucrative deal.” Joby alleges that the eVTOL rival’s understanding of “highly confidential” details helped it leverage negotiations.

Joby also said the developer attempted to terminate the agreement, citing a breach of confidentiality.

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Kivork refused to return the files when Joby approached him after conducting an investigation, according to the suit. The company also said Archer denied wrongdoing, and would not disclose how it learned about the terms of the agreement or provide results from an internal investigation it allegedly undertook.

The lawsuit comes during a busy period for electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) technology as companies race to gain Federal Aviation Administration certification to start flying commercially. ‘

The sector has also benefitted from President Donald Trump‘s newly minted eVTOL pilot program.

Joby argued in the complaint that it’s “imperative” to protect Joby’s work “from this type of espionage” to promote the sector’s success and ensure fair competition.

Last week, Joby said it completed its first test flight for a hybrid aircraft it’s working on with defense contractor L3Harris. This month, Amazon-backed Beta Technologies, another electric flight company, also went public on the New York Stock Exchange.

Joby shares have more than doubled over the last year, while Archer is up about 68%.

In August 2023, Archer settled a previous legal dispute with Boeing-owned Wisk Aero over the alleged theft of trade secrets. As part of the deal, Archer agreed to use Wisk as its autonomous tech partner.

A hearing is scheduled for March 20, 2026.

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Jobs data muddies the picture for a December rate cut, while the Nvidia rally fizzles

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Jobs data muddies the picture for a December rate cut, while the Nvidia rally fizzles

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Bitcoin falls to lowest level since April

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Bitcoin falls to lowest level since April

Andriy Onufriyenko | Moment | Getty Images

Bitcoin dropped on Thursday to levels not seen in more than six months, as investors appeared to pull back exposure to riskier assets and weighed the prospects of another Federal Reserve rate cut next month.

The flagship digital currency fell to as low as $86,325.81, its lowest level since April 21. It last traded at $86,690.11.

The release of stronger-than-expected U.S. jobs data raised questions about whether the central bank would lower its benchmark overnight rate. The U.S. economy added 119,000 in September, well above the 50,000 economists polled by Dow Jones expected.

That report sent the probability of a December rate cut to around 40%, according to the CME Group’s FedWatch tool.

Bitcoin’s pullback formed part of a broader cryptocurrency market decline. XRP was last down 2.3% on the day, and is below $2.00, while ether shed more than 3% to trade well below $3,000. Dogecoin was unchanged.

The world’s oldest crypto also led stocks lower, even after a blockbuster Nvidia earnings report. Traders who are heavily invested in AI-related stocks tend to also hold bitcoin, linking the two trades.

Bitcoin’s price has largely slid since a rash of cascading liquidations of highly leveraged crypto positions in early October.

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