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Mark Zuckerberg arrives before the inauguration of Donald Trump as the 47th president of the United States takes place inside the Capitol Rotunda of the U.S. Capitol building in Washington, D.C., Monday, Jan. 20, 2025.

Kenny Holston | Via Reuters

The digital advertising market was sunny enough for investors this past quarter, providing what could be a last hurrah before a looming economic storm from President Donald Trump‘s tariff onslaught.

Wall Street cheered the first-quarter results from tech giants like Meta and Alphabet, which both saw shares rise on strong revenue and earnings that beat analyst expectations.

The strong numbers from the online advertising titans in the face of economic worries showed that companies were still willing to promote their goods and services to consumers across the internet.

Amazon’s burgeoning online advertising unit also topped analyst estimates for the quarter. The online retail giant’s first-quarter ad sales jumped 19% year-over-year, representing a faster growth rate than Meta and Google’s advertising sales, which were 16% and 9%, respectively.

Smaller social media and online advertising firms like Reddit, Snap and Pinterest posted first-quarter sales that topped Wall Street projections. And even advertising technology companies like AppLovin and The Trade Desk posted strong quarterly earnings.

AppLovin shares surged nearly 15% on Wednesday after the provider of mobile ad technology surpassed analysts estimates and said it would sell its Tripledot Studios mobile gaming business.

Shares of The Trade Desk jumped 18% on Friday, just one day after the ad-tech firm reported first-quarter earnings that beat on the top and bottom lines.

The celebrations stopped, however, when it came time for executives to discuss the rest of the year.

Meta Chief Financial Officer Susan Li last week said that “Asia-based e-commerce exporters” are spending less on digital advertising due to the cessation of the de minimis trade loophole that benefited retail upstarts and heavy Facebook spenders like Temu and Shein.

“It’s very early, hard to know how things will play out over the quarter, and certainly, harder to know that for the rest of the year,” Li said during a call with analysts.

Executives at Alphabet and Pinterest shared similar sentiments about slower, Asia-specific ad sales and broader macroeconomic uncertainty heading into the rest of the year. Snap went so far as to pull its second-quarter guidance over the unpredictable economy potentially shrinking corporate ad budgets for the rest of the year.

Jeff Green, CEO of The Trade Desk, also noted the challenging economy on Thursday, saying that marketers face an “important time” as they work “amid increased macro volatility to start the year.”

“The good news is, Q1 was really strong, and Q4 of last year was pretty darn good,” said Sameer Samana, head of global equities and real assets for Wells Fargo Investment Institute.

But with companies from a variety of sectors lowering or even suspending their 2025 sales guidance, as in the case of auto giants like Ford Motor and toymaker Mattel, Samana believes the good times are likely coming to an end.

“What it’s telling me is that we better enjoy this rally, we better enjoy these good numbers,” Samana said. “This is going to be about as good as it gets for the coming year.”

In an ominous sign for social media and online advertising companies, retail and consumer packaged goods businesses like Procter & Gamble have warned of weakening sales amid the turbulent economy.

Jasmine Enberg, a vice president and principal analyst at eMarketer, said companies in these sectors generate “about half of all social ads in the U.S.,” and a decrease in their advertising spend “will have a ripple effect on the social ad market.”

Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta Platforms Inc.; from left, Lauren Sanchez; Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon.com Inc.; Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet Inc.; and Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla Inc., during the 60th presidential inauguration in the rotunda of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 20, 2025.

Julia Demaree Nikhinson | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Enberg believes that a potential slowdown in advertising spend will hurt smaller tech platforms more than their larger rivals.

“I think what we’re likely to see is what we tend to see in times of economic uncertainty, which is that advertisers seek refuge in larger platforms that provide them with scale and consistent ROI,” Enberg said.

But even tech giants like Meta may feel some financial pain, explained Greg Silverman, the global director of brand economics at consulting firm Interbrand.

Although other retailers may decide to run Facebook ads now that China-linked retailers like Temu are stepping back, those promotional campaigns are unlikely to be as lucrative for those companies, said Silverman.

Temu was willing to spend big on Facebook ads because it previously benefited from the de minimis trade loophole, Silverman said, and it’s unlikely that any U.S. retailer will do the same, particularly with a rickety supply chain and high tariffs potentially raising the cost of their goods.

“The return on ad spend that Temu was getting on Facebook is going to be hard for anyone else to recreate,” Silverman said.

For Wells Fargo’s Samana, the current economic uncertainty can be traced to trade policy and tariffs and their ensuing effects throughout the markets.

“We started the year with very low levels on tariffs,” Samana said. “Tariffs at the end of this are going to be higher, and they’re going to be meaningfully higher, and that is just not good for markets. I think that’s the only point that matters.”

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AI chipmaker Cerebras withdraws IPO

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AI chipmaker Cerebras withdraws IPO

AI chipmaker Cerebras pulls IPO after raising $1 billion

Artificial intelligence chipmaker Cerebras Systems said on Friday that it’s withdrawing plans for an IPO, days after announcing that it raised over $1 billion in a fundraising round.

In a filing with the SEC, Cerebras said it does not intend to conduct a proposed offering “at this time,” but didn’t provide a reason. A spokesperson told CNBC on Friday that the company still hopes to go public as soon as possible.

Cerebras filed for an IPO just over a year ago, as it was ramping up to take on Nvidia in an effort to create processors for running generative AI models. The filing revealed a heavy reliance on a single customer in the United Arab Emirates, Microsoft-backed G42, which is also a Cerebras investor.

In its prospectus, Cerebras said it had given voluntary notice to the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States about selling shares to G42. In March, the company announced that the committee had provided clearance.

Since its initial filing to go public on the Nasdaq, Cerebras has shifted its focus away from selling systems and more toward providing a cloud service for accepting incoming queries to models that use its chips underneath.

The announced withdrawal comes three days into a U.S. government shutdown that’s left agencies like the SEC operating with a small staff. In a plan for a shutdown published in August, the SEC said its electronic system EDGAR “is operated pursuant to a contract and thus will remain fully functional as long as funding for the contractor remains available through permitted means.”

On Tuesday, Cerebras said it had raised $1.1 billion at a valuation of $8.1 billion in a private funding round. At the time, CEO Andrew Feldman said that the company still wanted to go public, rather than continue to raise venture capital.

“I don’t think this is an indication of a preference for one or the other,” he told CNBC in an interview. “I think we have tremendous opportunities in front of us, and I think it’s good practice, when you have enormous opportunities, not to let them fall by the wayside for lack of capital.”

Feldman thought the original prospectus from last year was out of date, especially considering developments in AI, the spokesperson said on Friday.

Well heeled technology companies have been quickly signing up for additional infrastructure to handle demand. On Tuesday CoreWeave, which rents out Nvidia chips through a cloud service, said it had signed a $14.2 billion agreement with Meta. ChatGPT operator OpenAI said last week that it had committed to spending $300 billion on cloud services from Oracle.

The government shutdown did not factor into Cerebras’ decision, the spokesperson said.

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Amazon shutters 4 Fresh stores in Southern California as grocery strategy keeps shifting

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Amazon shutters 4 Fresh stores in Southern California as grocery strategy keeps shifting

An employee arranges a salad dressing display at an Amazon Fresh grocery store on December 12, 2024 in Federal Way, Washington.

David Ryder | Getty Images

Amazon is closing four more Fresh supermarkets in Southern California as the e-commerce giant continues to focus its grocery strategy around Whole Foods and delivery.

The closures will take place in the coming weeks, Amazon confirmed to CNBC. They follow the shuttering of four other U.S. locations in recent months, in Washington, Virginia, New York and a Los Angeles suburb.

“Certain locations work better than others, and after an assessment, we’ve made the decision to close these Amazon Fresh locations,” Amazon spokesperson Griffin Buch said in a statement. “We’re working closely with affected employees to help them find new roles within Amazon wherever possible.”

At one Fresh supermarket in La Verne, California, employees were told to gather for an all-hands meeting on Wednesday, according to an internal message viewed by CNBC. They learned at the meeting that the store would close in mid-November, and that employees would receive a severance package, according to a person familiar with the matter who asked not to be named because the details were confidential.

The other three stores that are closing are in cities of Mission Viejo, La Habra and Whittier.

Last week, Amazon said it intends to close 14 Fresh grocery stores in the U.K. and convert its five other locations there into Whole Foods markets.

Amazon said it regularly evaluates its store portfolio, which can lead to opening, reopening, relocating or closing certain locations. In the U.S., the company has more than 60 remaining Fresh stores. Last year, the company removed its “Just Walk Out” cashierless technology from the stores. It’s also been culling its footprint of Go cashierless convenience stores.

Amazon has been determined to become a major grocery player for nearly two decades. The company launched Amazon Fresh in 2007, then a pilot project for fresh food delivery, before acquiring upscale chain Whole Foods for $13.7 billion in 2017, its biggest purchase on record.

Amazon debuted its Fresh grocery chain in 2020, with an eye toward mass-market shoppers. The rollout has been turbulent since its early days.

The company opened a flurry of Fresh locations by 2022, but the expansion plans ran into CEO Andy Jassy’s widespread cost-cutting efforts as the company reckoned with the impact of rising interest rates and soaring inflation. In 2023, Amazon announced it would shut some Fresh stores and halt further openings temporarily as it evaluated how to make the chain stand out for shoppers.

While it’s closing Fresh stores, Amazon continues to “innovate and invest in making grocery shopping easier, faster, and more affordable,” Buch said. The company still maintains 500 Whole Foods locations and has opened mini “daily shop” Whole Foods stores in New York City.

On Wednesday, Amazon also launched a new “price-conscious” grocery brand that will be offered online and in its physical stores. And last month, Amazon expanded same-day delivery of fresh foods to more pockets of the U.S.

Jassy and other company executives have touted the success of sales of “everyday essentials” within its online grocery business, which refers to items such as canned goods, paper towels, dish soap and snacks. Jassy told investors at the company’s annual shareholder meeting in May that he remains “bullish” on grocery, calling it a “significant business” for Amazon.

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Quantum stocks Rigetti Computing and D-Wave surged double-digits this week. Here’s what’s driving the big move

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Quantum stocks Rigetti Computing and D-Wave surged double-digits this week. Here's what's driving the big move

Inside Google’s quantum computing lab in Santa Barbara, California.

CNBC

Quantum computing stocks are wrapping up a big week of double-digit gains.

Shares of Rigetti Computing, D-Wave Quantum and Quantum Computing have surged more than 20%. Rigetti and D-Wave Quantum have more than doubled and tripled, respectively, since the start of the year. Arqit Quantum skyrocketed more than 32% this week.

The jump in shares followed a wave of positive news in the quantum space.

Rigetti said it had purchase orders totalling $5.7 million for two of its 9-qubit Novera quantum computing systems. The owner of drugmaker Novo Nordisk and the Danish government also invested 300 million euros in a quantum venture fund.

In a blog post earlier this week, Nvidia also highlighted accelerated computing, which it argues can make “quantum computing breakthroughs of today and tomorrow possible.”

Investors have piled into quantum computing technology this year, as tech giants Microsoft, Nvidia and Amazon have embraced the technology with a wave of new chip announcements, multi-million dollar investments and research plans.

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