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

Buzzy artificial intelligence startup Anthropic has found itself at odds with the White House over regulatory policy for the AI industry. CEO Dario Amodei jumped into the discourse yesterday to push back on claims that the company is “woke.”

Here’s what to know:

• Anthropic has largely struck a different tone on AI regulation than its competitor OpenAI. The company opposed a proposed amendment to President Donald Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill Act.” that would have suspended state-level AI law.
• As a result, David Sacks — the venture capitalist serving as Trump’s AI and crypto czar — has chastised Anthropic. He said the company is running its regulatory strategy around “fear mongering” and has positioned “itself consistently as a foe of the Trump administration.”
• LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman came to Anthropic’s defense on Monday, calling the company “one of the good guys.” Hoffman’s vote of confidence is particular noteworthy given his investments in rival OpenAI.
• Sacks shot back at Hoffman, writing on social media that Anthropic is looking to “backdoor Woke AI and other AI regulations.”
• Anthropic’s Amodei said yesterday that the company is aligned with the White House on “key areas of AI policy” and shares goals with the administration and lawmakers on both sides of the aisle.

Netflix missed analysts’ earnings per share estimates for the third quarter, pushing shares down more than 7% in overnight trading. The streamer placed blame for its weaker-than-expected report on an expense stemming from a dispute with Brazilian tax authorities.

The California-based company’s report comes after it announced on Tuesday that it will bring the hit animated film “KPop Demon Hunters” to the toy market. Netflix said it will partner with toymakers Hasbro and Mattel on various items tied to the movie.

Stock futures are slightly lower this morning after Netflix’s slide. Follow live markets updates here.

Warner Bros. Discovery said yesterday that it’s open to a sale, as the media giant gears up for a corporate split up. Investors appeared to like this news, with shares jumping 11% in the session.

The HBO and CNN parent said it will review all of its options after getting “unsolicited interest” from multiple parties. While the company previously announced plans to break its business into two, it has also seen takeover interest by fellow industry titan Paramount Skydance.

Speaking of HBO, Warner Bros. Discovery announced yesterday that it is hiking prices for the network’s streaming platform.

Shoppers are feeling “discount burnout” heading into Black Friday and Cyber Monday, according to consulting firm AlixPartners.

On average, the more than 9,000 U.S. consumers surveyed by the firm said price was less important to them than a year ago when deciding to buy new clothes. Additionally, fewer consumers listed sales and finding the top deal as “very important” compared to last year.

Overall, AlixPartners’ data shows fashion prices have risen $17 from last year on average. Some categories, including jackets and outerwear, saw larger price hikes than others, such as swimwear.

Activist investor firm Jana Partners linked up with an unexpected teammate for a stake in Six Flags: NFL star Travis Kelce. (You might also know Kelce as Taylor Swift’s fiancé.)

Jana and Kelce are part of an investment group that now holds an economic interest of around 9% in the amusement park operator. The group said it wants to work with the company’s board to improve shareholder value and guest experience.

Kelce said in a statement that he is a “lifelong” Six Flags fan and wants to ensure the company is “special for the next generation.” Shares of Six Flags are slightly lower before the bell this morning after rallying more than 17% yesterday.

JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs are harnessing it to employ fewer people. Ford CEO Jim Farley warned that it will “replace literally half of all white-collar workers.” Salesforce‘s Marc Benioff claimed it’s already doing up to 50% of the company’s workload. Walmart CEO Doug McMillon told The Wall Street Journal that it “is going to change literally every job.”

The “it” that’s on corporate America’s lips is artificial intelligence.

Less than three years into the generative AI boom, executives across every major industry are loudly telling employees and shareholders that, due to the technological revolution underway, the size and shape of their workforce is about to dramatically change, if it hasn’t already.

What started with the launch of OpenAI’s ChatGPT and a novel new way for consumers to use chatbots has rapidly made its way into the enterprise, with companies employing customized AI agents to automate functions in customer support, marketing, coding, content creation and elsewhere.

Recent estimates from Goldman Sachs suggest that 6% to 7% of U.S. workers could lose their jobs because of AI adoption. The Stanford Digital Economy Lab, using ADP employment data, found that entry-level hiring in “AI exposed jobs” has dropped 13% since large language models started proliferating. The report said software development, customer service and clerical work are the types of jobs most vulnerable to AI today.

“We are at the beginning of a multi-decade progress development that will have a major impact on the labor market,” said Gad Levanon, chief economist at the Burning Glass Institute, a research firm that focuses on changes in the economy and workforce.

Automation, of course, is nothing new. Every era has its printing press, ATM machine, self-checkout machine or online booking agency that’s replaced human labor with some form of technology. In the process, new jobs emerge and economies adapt and evolve.

A report from the World Economic Forum earlier this year estimated that the onslaught of AI, robotics and automation could displace 92 million jobs by 2030, while adding 170 million new roles. AI development, research, safety and implementation are all areas of growth, along with robotics.

Erik Brynjolfsson, director of the Stanford research group, said that, in addition to new types of roles, physical jobs such as health aids and construction workers are so far shielded from AI disruption.

“There’s going to be more turbulence in both directions in the coming months and years,” Brynjolfsson said in an interview. “We need to prepare our workforce.”

The high-level data isn’t yet showing massive changes.

The U.S. government is three weeks into a shutdown, so the Bureau of Labor Statistics has gone dark. But alternative reports from organizations like the Chicago Fed have shown an economy that’s plodding along. Employment growth is meek, but the labor market is holding steady.

The unemployment rate held flat at 4.3% in September, according to the Chicago Fed, as did the rate for layoffs and other separations at 2.1%.

A recent study published by the Budget Lab at Yale found no “discernible disruption” caused by ChatGPT. Martha Gimbel, co-founder of the lab, called the upheaval from AI “minimal” and “incredibly concentrated,” although that could shift as technological changes work through the broader economy.

“The rest of the economy often moves more slowly than Silicon Valley,” she said.

The New York Fed found in a survey last month that only 1% of services firms reported laying off workers because of AI in the last six months. The Society for Human Resource Management said its data shows that 6% of U.S. jobs have been automated by 50% or more, a number that rises to 32% for computer and math-related professions.

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said in June that his company’s corporate workforce will shrink from AI over the next few years, and encouraged employees to learn how to use AI tools to eventually “get more done with scrappier teams.”

The New York Times published an investigative piece on Tuesday, showing that Amazon’s automation team expects that it can avoid hiring more than 160,000 people in the U.S. by 2027, equaling savings of about 30 cents on every item that Amazon packs and delivers. The report was based on interviews and internal strategy documents, the Times said.

Palantir CEO Alex Karp told CNBC in August that his data analytics company, which has seen its market cap soar more than elevenfold in the past two years, aims to grow revenue by 10 times and reduce its head count by about 12%. He didn’t provide a timeframe for reaching that goal.

The message is making its way across the tech industry.

Benioff, Salesforce’s CEO, said last month that his software company has cut the number of customer support roles from 9,000 to 5,000 “because I need less heads.” Swedish fintech firm Klarna said it has downsized its workforce by 40% as it adopts AI. Shopify CEO Tobi Lutke told employees in April that they’ll be expected to prove why they “cannot get what they want done using AI” before asking for more head count and resources.

Coding assistants have been some of the early winners of the generative AI rush, becoming the first real application type to attract a hefty number of paying users. The Information reported last week that Anysphere, the parent of Cursor, is in talks to raise funds at a $27 billion valuation, as it takes on Microsoft’s GitHub and other startups, including Replit, in an increasingly crowded market.

Software development is just the beginning.

In banking, JPMorgan’s managers have been told to avoid hiring people as the firm deploys AI across its businesses, CFO Jeremy Barnum told analysts last week. Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon said that as his bank incorporates AI, it will be “taking a front-to-back view of how we organize our people, make decisions, and think about productivity and efficiency.”

Then there’s the auto sector.

When Ford CEO Farley told Walter Isaacson in an interview in July that “AI will leave a lot of white-collar people behind,” he was reflecting a sentiment that’s growing across his industry. According to a survey of 500 U.S. car dealers conducted by marketing solutions firm Phyron, half of respondents said they expect AI to sell vehicles autonomously by 2027.

“That means AI creating the marketing assets, handling listings, answering buyer questions, negotiating deals, arranging finance, and completing the sale — all without human input,” Phyron said in the report on its survey results last month.

The topic will likely get a lot of attention in the next couple weeks as the world’s biggest tech companies issue quarterly results and update investors on their AI deployments. Tesla kicks off tech earnings season on Wednesday, followed next week by Alphabet, Meta, Microsoft, Apple and Amazon.

WATCH: AI won’t replace workers but tasks workers do

BEIJING — Chinese tech giant Baidu announced Wednesday that its robotaxi unit will start test drives in Switzerland in December, as firms race to get their vehicles on European roads.

The company’s Apollo Go unit will work with Swiss public transit operator PostBus through a strategic partnership, Baidu said.

By the first quarter of 2027, the companies aim to begin operating a public-facing fully driverless taxi service called “AmiGo” that uses Apollo Go’s RT6 electric vehicles, the press release said. Baidu added that once the robotaxis are up and running, the operators plan to remove the cars’ steering wheels.

Plans to start tests in December are the most concrete steps Baidu has announced so far in getting its robotaxis on public roads in Europe.

The Chinese tech company said in August that it would partner with U.S. ride-hailing company Lyft to deploy robotaxis in the U.K. and Germany starting in 2026. A month earlier, Baidu announced a partnership with Uber to deploy Apollo Go robotaxis on the ride-hailing platform outside the U.S. and mainland China later in the year.

Other robotaxi companies are also racing to expand into Europe and the Middle East, after building up operations in the U.S. and China.

On Friday, Chinese robotaxi operator Pony.ai announced it will work with Stellantis to begin tests in Luxembourg in the coming months, before expanding to other European cities next year.

U.S. rival Waymo, owned by Google parent Alphabet, last week also announced plans to start tests in London before launching the self-driving taxi service there next year. Uber in June said it would start trials in spring 2026 of fully autonomous rides in the U.K. with SoftBank-backed self-driving tech startup Wayve.

— CNBC’s Arjun Kharpal contributed to this report.