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CEO of Alphabet and Google Sundar Pichai in Warsaw, Poland on March 29, 2022.

Mateusz Wlodarczyk | Nurphoto | Getty Images

Alphabet shares dropped more than 7% on Wednesday after the search giant fell short of Wall Street’s fourth-quarter revenue expectations and announced big spending plans for its ongoing artificial intelligence buildout.

The stock headed for its worst session in more than a year.

The company topped earnings estimates by 2 cents per share. Revenue came in at $96.47 billion, behind the $96.56 billion expected by LSEG. Alphabet’s revenue grew 12% overall from a year ago, while its YouTube advertising business, search business and services segment slowed year over year.

Alphabet also said it plans to spend $75 billion on capital expenditures as it builds out its AI offerings and races against megacap rivals to build out data centers and new infrastructure. The figure was much higher than the $58.84 billion expected by Wall Street analysts, according to FactSet.

Finance chief Anat Ashkenazi said the higher expenses will help “support the growth of our business across Google Services, Google Cloud and Google DeepMind.” She also said the spending will go toward “technical infrastructure, primarily for servers, followed by data centers and networking.”

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The company expects capital expenditures to range between $16 billion and $18 billion. That was higher than the $14.3 billion estimate from FactSet.

JPMorgan analyst Doug Anmuth highlighted costs, capex and cloud revenue as the “culprits” for the stock’s post-earnings performance. Bernstein’s Mark Shmulik also noted that this is the third quarter that the stock move connects to Google’s cloud segment.

“If digital ad growth is akin to a long drive competition, then Google would be sitting comfortably here with strong Search and YouTube bombs down the fairway,” Shmulik said.

“But as the game shifts to the AI putting green, there’s little room for error with a slight cloud miss, a whopping CAPEX guide up to $75B for 2025, and lack of actionable operating leverage commentary leaves Google 3- putting for bogey,” he added.

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Micron shares jump on earnings beat, rosy guidance as data center revenue triples

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Micron shares jump on earnings beat, rosy guidance as data center revenue triples

Signage outside the Micron offices in San Jose, California, on Dec. 17, 2024.

David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Micron shares popped 6% in extended trading Thursday after the company reported second-quarter results that beat analysts’ estimates and offered better-than-expected guidance.

Here’s how the company did:

  • Earnings per share: $1.56, adjusted vs. $1.42 expected by LSEG
  • Revenue: $8.05 billion vs. $7.89 billion expected by LSEG

Revenue increased 38% from $5.82 billion during the same period in 2024, Micron said in a press release. The memory and storage solutions company reported net income of $1.58 billion, or $1.41 per share, up from $793 million, or 71 cents per share, in the year-ago quarter.

Data center revenue tripled, the company said.

Revenue for the fiscal third quarter will be about $8.8 billion, Micron said, topping the $8.5 billion average analyst estimate, according to LSEG. Adjusted earnings will be roughly $1.57 a share, the company said, beating the $1.47 average estimate.

Prior to Thursday’s close, Micron shares were up 22% for the year, while the Nasdaq is down more than 8%.

Micron will host its quarterly call with investors at 4:30 p.m. ET.

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BlackRock’s head of digital assets says staking could be a ‘huge step change’ for ether ETFs

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BlackRock’s head of digital assets says staking could be a ‘huge step change’ for ether ETFs

Omar Marques | Lightrocket | Getty Images

Appetite for ether ETFs has been tepid since their launch last July, but that could change if some of the regulatory wrinkles holding them back get “resolved,” according to Robert Mitchnick, head of digital assets at BlackRock.

There’s a widely held view that the success of ether ETFs has been “meh” compared to the explosive growth in funds tracking bitcoin, Mitchnick said at the Digital Asset Summit in New York City Thursday. Though he sees that as a “misconception,” he acknowledged that the inability to earn a staking yield on the funds is likely one thing holding them back.

“There’s obviously a next phase in the potential evolution of [ether ETFs],” he said. “An ETF, it’s turned out, has been a really, really compelling vehicle through which to hold bitcoin for lots of different investor types. There’s no question it’s less perfect for ETH today without staking. A staking yield is a meaningful part of how you can generate investment return in this space, and all the [ether] ETFs at launch did not have staking.”

Staking is a way for investors to earn passive yield on their cryptocurrency holdings by locking tokens up on the network for a period of time. It allows investors to put their crypto to work if they’re not planning to sell it anytime soon.

But Mitchnick doesn’t expect a simple fix.

“It’s not a particularly easy problem,” he explained. “It’s not as simple as … a new administration just green-lighting something and then boom, we’re all good, off to the races. There are a lot of fairly complex challenges that have to be figured out, but if that can get figured out, then it’s going to be sort of a step change upward in terms of what we see the activity around those products is.”

The Securities and Exchange Commission has historically viewed some staking services as potential unregistered securities offerings under the Howey Test – which is used to determine whether an asset is an investment contract and therefore, a security. But a more crypto friendly SEC is moving swiftly to reverse the damage done to the industry under the previous regime. Its newly formed crypto task force is scheduled to kick off a roundtable series Friday focused on defining the security status of digital assets.

Ether has been one of the most beaten up cryptocurrencies in recent months. It’s down more than 40% year to date as it has struggled with conflicting and difficult-to-comprehend narratives, weaker revenue since its last big technical upgrade and increasing competition from Solana. Standard Chartered this week slashed its price target on the coin by more than half.

Mitchnick said the negativity is “overdone.”

“ETH … at the second grade level is easier to define … but at the 10th grade level is a lot harder,” he said. “Second grade level: it’s a technology innovation story. … Beyond that, it does get a little more vast, a little more complicated. It’s about being a bet on blockchain adoption and innovation. That’s part of the thesis as we communicate it to clients.”

“There are three [use cases] that we focus on that have a lot of resonance with our client base: it’s a bet to some extent on tokenization, on stablecoin adoption, and on decentralized financing,” he added. “It does take a fair bit of education, and we’ve been on that journey, but it’s going to take more time.”

BlackRock is the issuer of the iShares Ethereum Trust ETF. It also has a tokenized money market fund, known as BUIDL, which it initially launched a year ago on Ethereum and has since expanded to several other networks including Aptos and Polygon.

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Tesla to recall 46,000 Cybertrucks, citing exterior panel that can increase ‘risk of crash’

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Tesla to recall 46,000 Cybertrucks, citing exterior panel that can increase 'risk of crash'

A Tesla Cybertruck is parked in front of the White House in Washington, U.S., March 11, 2025. 

Kevin Lamarque | Reuters

Tesla is recalling more than 46,000 of its Cybertrucks due to a cosmetic exterior trim panel that it said can “delaminate and detach from the vehicle,” potentially becoming a road hazard and “increasing the risk of a crash.”

The recall covers an exterior part of the vehicle, known as a cant rail, and it will affect all Cybertruck vehicles manufactured from November 2023 to February 2025, Tesla wrote in a filing to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

The Cybertrucks’ recall comes at an already-challenging time for the embattled EV maker, whose value has dropped by more than 40% as CEO Elon Musk continues his role as a top advisor in the Trump administration.

Owners of affected vehicles can take their Cybertrucks to Tesla’s service department for free replacement of the cant rail, the company wrote in its filing.

Both Tesla and The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Following the recall filing, The Information reported that the company plans to introduce a new innovation to the Cybertruck’s battery this year that would “sharply decrease battery manufacturing costs,” citing a senior executive.

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