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Signage at Google headquarters in Mountain View, California, US, on Thursday, Oct. 23, 2025.

Benjamin Fanjoy | Bloomberg | Getty Images

The news is coming in fast and thick. Strap in.

First, interest rates.

The U.S. Federal Reserve lowered rates by 25 basis points, as expected by traders. But Chair Jerome Powell cautioned that another cut in December, which the market had been pricing in with more than 90% certainty, “is not a foregone conclusion.”

His statement threw cold water on the markets, sending most stocks lower and Treasury yields higher.

Next, Big Tech earnings.

Alphabet, Meta and Microsoft reported earnings that beat analyst expectations on the top and bottom lines. Notably, Alphabet’s quarterly revenue topped $100 billion for the first time.

And finally capital expenditure.

Capex is really the big story here. Alphabet, Meta and Microsoft are saying they are going to spend much more money.

Alphabet not only raised its capex estimate for fiscal year 2025 to a “a range of $91 billion to $93 billion” from its earlier forecast of $75 billion to $85 billion, but is now expecting “a significant increase” in capex for 2026, according to finance chief Anat Ashkenazi.

Meta hiked the low end of its capex guidance for the year to $70 billion from $66 billion. “Being able to make a significantly larger investment here is very likely to be a profitable thing” CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in the earnings call.

And Microsoft’s Chief Financial Officer Amy Hood said capex in the firm’s fiscal first quarter came in at $34.9 billion — higher than the $30 billion figure estimated in July. The capex growth rate for fiscal 2026 will also surpass that in 2025, Hood added.

The crux is that spending on artificial intelligence isn’t going to slow down, at least for the next year, thanks to increasing demand for AI services. Fears of a bubble can be deferred for now.

That’s it for the day. We all can take a breather — at least until headlines emerge from U.S. President Donald Trump and China’s Xi Jinping’s meeting later in the day.

What you need to know today

And finally…

Chinese President Xi Jinping and U.S. President Donald Trump

Sergey Bobylev | Kent Nishimura | Reuters

Trump-Xi meeting nears with high stakes and hopes, but few details

A high-stakes meeting between U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping could yield a breakthrough in the trade relationship between the two economic superpowers.

But while both the Trump administration and Beijing are projecting optimism ahead of the sit-down, specifics about the summit remain unclear — and some experts are skeptical of the White House’s confidence on achieving a favorable outcome.

— Kevin Breuninger

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Gaming billionaire: Prepare for AI to ‘completely disrupt everything’ across the industry

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Gaming billionaire: Prepare for AI to 'completely disrupt everything' across the industry

Min-Liang Tan speaks during a conference at SXSW Sydney on October 16, 2024 in Sydney, Australia.

Nina Franova | Getty Images

Artificial intelligence is set to have a huge impact on the gaming industry and its billions of players, according to Min-Liang Tan, the billionaire CEO and co-founder of gaming firm Razer.

From the ways in which games are developed to hacks for completing levels, Tan said the technology’s ramifications across the sector can’t be overstated.

“For us at Razer, the way we see it is that AI is going to completely disrupt everything, or change everything in gaming,” Tan told CNBC’s “Beyond the Valley” podcast.

Gaming plays a significant role in the creative sector, with 3.6 billion players around the world and annual revenue of nearly $189 billion, according to research company Newzoo, which tracks data across mobile, console and PC games.

Razer changed gaming with its hardware. Now it’s hoping to do the same with AI

“Game developers will now be able to use AI tools, and then you’ve got game publishers that will now distribute, market new games with AI tools … For gamers, the AI tools will be able to change things, in terms of the way they play,” Tan told CNBC’s Arjun Kharpal at Singapore’s SWITCH conference.

Razer, known for its gaming gear like mice, headsets and keyboards, has developed Game Co-AI, a tool that uses computer vision to “watch” how a gamer plays and provides tips on solving quests or defeating enemies. The tool will also use data such as public APIs, and a beta version of Game Co-AI will be available “later in 2025,” according to Razer’s website.

The potential use of AI in esports — or competitive gaming — has sparked debate, however.

“We will not have AI running, I think, during a game itself, but what about at the point of time of training?” Tan said. There is an appetite among some esports players to use AI to help coach future stars, Tan said. “There’s a lot of excitement in respect of this. The opportunities are limitless.”

Along with helping players, AI will also be able to detect and fix bugs when games are developed, according to Tan.

Traditionally, game testing involved “a whole bunch of people sitting in a room,” playing games and identifying bugs one by one, Tan said, in a process known as quality assurance or QA. Razer is developing an AI QA Companion, which can find and log bugs — and will soon also be able to suggest bug fixes, he added.

“[QA] is about 20% to 30% of the [development] costs, it takes up about 30% of the time,” Tan said, adding that the new tool will automate the QA process, making human testers more effective and productive.

AI-created games?

The effects of AI are being felt across industries, but there is still some disagreement on how far AI can go in gaming.

Strauss Zelnick, the CEO of video game publisher Take-Two Interactive, which makes Grand Theft Auto, said on Tuesday that AI can’t rival human game developers.

When asked for his gaming predictions for a year’s time, however, Tan said: “I think we will be talking about some of the new, exciting games that have been built with AI, and how we see the future from that. Maybe we might see one or two major hit games.”

Developing a game usually involves large teams and significant investment, but AI will allow smaller groups of people to do so, according to Tan. Rather than being a threat to jobs, AI can remove “tedious” tasks, he added. “The human creativity still needs to be there.”

The way in which the gaming industry uses AI may have a wider impact beyond the sector, Tan said, suggesting that it could “spawn multiple other new industries.”

“A lot of what’s happening in the tech industry was born from gaming, and I believe that a lot of what will happen for AI will also be born from AI gaming,” he said.

Razer was founded by Tan and Robert Krakoff in 2005, and the company became known for the Boomslang, a mouse — named after a deadly snake — designed specifically for gaming. “For a gamer, the mouse is everything. It’s an extension of your arm,” Tan said. “The more precise your mouse is, the more likely you are going to be able to get frags,” he said, referring to the “kills” made in first-person shooter games.

Headquartered in Singapore and Irvine, California, Tan said the company went global “very quickly” after it launched. Razer went public in 2017, listing on the Hong Kong stock exchange, before going private again in 2022.

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Musk teases Tesla Roadster demo by year-end. He’s been hyping a new one since 2017

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Musk teases Tesla Roadster demo by year-end. He's been hyping a new one since 2017

Toyota Motor Corp President Akio Toyoda gets out of a Tesla Motor’s Roadster electric car with Tesla Motors Chief Exective Officer Elon Musk (behind car) upon their arrival at a news conference in Tokyo November 12, 2010.

Issei Kato | Reuters

Eight years ago, Tesla CEO Elon Musk promoted a next-generation Roadster, basing the name of the sports car on the company’s debut electric vehicle from 2008.

The updated version has yet to hit production. But Musk is again promising that a new one is on the way.

In a discussion with podcaster Joe Rogan that was published on Friday, Musk was asked about the long-delayed vehicle. He provided a sense of timing but declined to share updated technical or design details.

“I can’t do the unveil before the unveil,” Musk said. As he’s said before, Musk claimed the new Roadster “has a shot at being the most memorable product unveil ever.”

Tesla is aiming to show off the updated Roadster to fans and investors “hopefully before the end of the year,” Musk said.

Musk’s comments come a day after former close friend Sam Altman, OpenAI’s CEO, posted on X that he tried to cancel his Roadster reservation from 2018 and get his deposit refunded. He shared a screenshot showing that his email to the company had bounced back.

“I really was excited for the car!” Altman wrote. “And I understand delays. But 7.5 years has felt like a long time to wait.”

Musk, who helped start OpenAI in 2015, is in a heated legal dispute with Altman and now runs competing artificial intelligence startup xAI.

Patrick George, editor-in-chief at InsideEVs and a long-time industry observer, told CNBC on Friday that the Roadster “has been MIA for years.”

“The only thing I can think of that would make Musk start talking about this again is that Sam Altman at OpenAI, who is sort of his arch-rival, just said recently that he was trying to cancel his Roadster reservation which he has held since 2018,” George said.

Earlier this year, the popular gadget and autos reviewer Marques Brownlee discussed the arduous process of cancelling his own Roadster reservation in an interview with Waveform Podcast.

The Roadster is a high end, low-volume model, something meant to challenge vehicles like BYD’s YangWang U9 Xtreme, which was recently crowned the world’s fastest production car.

Musk faces a major Tesla shareholder vote next week, as he and the board are asking investors to approve a massive pay package.

The pay plan would net Musk nearly $1 trillion in Tesla stock and would grow his stake to around 25%, depending on the company hitting various market valuations and other growth milestones.

WATCH: CNBC’s interview with Tesla Chair Robyn Denholm

Tesla Board Chair Robyn Denholm: The technology of AI is truly transformative

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Don’t own any Apple? Gear up to buy some if the stock keeps falling

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Don’t own any Apple? Gear up to buy some if the stock keeps falling

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