AWS recovers, Apple rallies, General Motors beats and more in Morning Squawk
Attendees walk through an exposition hall at AWS re:Invent, a conference hosted by Amazon Web Services, in Las Vegas on Dec. 3, 2024.
Noah Berger | Getty Images
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. WTF, AWS
What began as an early morning outage report for Amazon Web Services snowballed into a daylong saga that limited access to popular websites used for work, school, entertainment and travel. Monday evening, the company said all its services returned to normal operations.
Here’s a recap:
- Downdetector showed users had problems accessing a variety of sites, ranging from Snapchat to Lyft to The New York Times to Venmo. Travelers reported problems with finding airline reservations and checking in online, while the British government said it was in communication with AWS over impacted services.
- AWS is the leading vendor of cloud infrastructure technology, with millions of companies and groups using its services tied to servers and storage.
- Cybersecurity executive Rob Jardin told CNBC that the outage didn’t seem to be caused by a cyber attack and was likely due to a technical issue with one of Amazon’s key data centers.
- It’s not the only outage in recent memory: AWS faced a disruption in 2023, and Microsoft Windows systems went dark last year following a problematic CrowdStrike software update.
- AWS said it will share a “post-event summary” following Monday’s outage.
2. Green Apple
Consumers experience the iPhone 17 in an Apple store in Shanghai, China on October 13, 2025.
Cfoto | Future Publishing | Getty Images
On the other hand, yesterday was a great day for Apple investors. Shares rallied to all-time highs after a report from technology research firm Counterpoint showed iPhone 17 sales were off to a good start in the U.S. and China.
CNBC’s Jim Cramer said Apple’s surge shows why you’re better off holding the stock than dumping it. Meanwhile, Ritholtz Wealth Management CEO Josh Brown said on CNBC that Apple’s artificial intelligence efforts can create a “whole different story” for the investing outlook.
Apple’s jump helped juice the broader market, with the three major indexes all gaining more than 1%. Follow live market updates here.
3. Greasing the wheel
Traders work on the floor at the New York Stock Exchange on March 27, 2025.
Brendan McDermid | Reuters
The latest big-name corporate earnings reports out this morning came in stronger than Wall Street anticipated.
General Motors blew past analysts’ consensus expectations for both earnings per share and revenue in the third quarter. The automaker also lifted its full-year guidance and said the impact from tariffs would be lower than previously forecast. Shares surged 8.5% in premarket trading.
Coca-Cola also beat the Street’s forecasts on both lines for the third quarter, sending shares up nearly 2% before the bell. However, the soda maker said demand remained soft.
4. End in sight?
White House National Economic Adviser Kevin Hassett prepares to give a live television interview at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., August 4, 2025.
Jonathan Ernst | Reuters
There could be light at the end of the tunnel for the federal government shutdown. National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett told CNBC the closure — which is now on its 21st day — “is likely to end sometime this week.”
The White House adviser warned, however, that the Trump administration could impose “stronger measures” if a resolution isn’t reached. Hassett said he heard that Senate Democrats felt it would be “bad optics” to reopen the government before the “No Kings” protests against Trump that took place nationwide Saturday.
5. Down under
U.S. President Donald Trump, and Anthony Albanese, Australia’s prime minister, shake hands outside the West Wing of the White House in Washington, DC, US, on Monday, Oct. 20, 2025.
Bloomberg | Bloomberg | Getty Images
As the focus on rare earth materials intensifies, the U.S. and Australia inked an agreement that includes project plans totaling as much as $8.5 billion. As CNBC’s Spencer Kimball notes, this deal comes as Trump pushes to build a rare earth supply chain that’s independent of China.
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said each country would contribute $1 billion over the next six months. Later, the White House said in a fact sheet that the countries would each invest more than $3 billion in that time frame.
Shares of U.S.-listed rare earth stocks jumped in Monday’s session. Notably, Cleveland-Cliffs soared more than 20% after the steel producer said it was considering creating a rare earth mining business.
The Daily Dividend
Famed entrepreneur Mark Cuban sat down with CNBC’s Bertha Coombs in Las Vegas for an exclusive, 30-minute interview about the health-care industry. Watch it here.
— CNBC’s Spencer Kimball, Tasmin Lockwood, Kevin Breuninger, Jaures Yip, Luke Fountain, Sean Conlon, Annie Palmer, Katrina Bishop and Leslie Josephs contributed to this report. Terri Cullen edited this edition.
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky said he wants to integrate ChatGPT artificial intelligence capabilities into the travel platform but the software isn’t ready.
“The [software development kit] wasn’t quite robust enough for the things we want to do,” he told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” on Wednesday.
Chesky said the company would “probably” want to integrate ChatGPT eventually.
Airbnb on Tuesday launched a series of new social features, such as direct messaging, to its platform. The update also included a personalized version of the company’s chatbot launched earlier this year that can cancel and change reservations for users in North America.
In an interview with Bloomberg this week, Chesky said that the OpenAI chatbot isn’t “quite ready” for integration with Airbnb. He said the model was made using 13 different chatbots and that Airbnb is depending heavily on Alibaba’s Qwen model.
Chesky, who is a close friend of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, said it’s only the beginning of the AI revolution and he expects the technology to fuel a consumer app craze over the next few years.
“We’re all going to have to work together,” he said. “AI is going to lift up a lot of companies. If they want to vertically integrate every single thing, that’s going to be very, very difficult.”
OpenAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta Platforms.
David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Meta will lay off roughly 600 employees within its artificial intelligence unit as the company looks to reduce layers and operate more nimbly, a spokesperson confirmed to CNBC on Wednesday.
The company announced the cuts in a memo from its Chief AI Officer Alexandr Wang, who was hired in June as part of Meta’s $14.3 billion investment in Scale AI. Workers across Meta’s AI infrastructure units, Fundamental Artificial Intelligence Research unit and other product-related positions will be impacted.
Axios was first to report the cuts.
Meta has been aggressively investing in AI as it works to keep pace with rivals like OpenAI and Google, pouring billions of dollars into infrastructure projects and recruitment.
On Tuesday, the company announced a $27 billion deal with Blue Owl Capital to fund and develop its massive Hyperion data center in rural Louisiana. The data center is expected to be large enough to cover a “significant part of the footprint of Manhattan,” Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a post in July.
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