Evan Spiegel, CEO of Snap Inc., attends the annual Allen and Co. Sun Valley Media and Technology Conference at the Sun Valley Resort in Sun Valley, Idaho, on July 9, 2025.
David A. Grogan | CNBC
Snap shares tanked 15% Tuesday when it reported second-quarter earnings in which global average revenue per user missed expectations.
Here is how the company did compared with Wall Street’s expectations:
Earnings per share: Loss of 16 cents. That figure is not comparable to analysts’ estimates.
Revenue: $1.34 billion vs. $1.35 billion expected, according to LSEG
Global daily active users: 469 million vs. 467 million expected, according to StreetAccount
Global average revenue per user (ARPU): $2.87 vs. $2.90 expected, according to StreetAccount
ARPU is an indication of how much advertising revenue the company generates from each user. The weaker-than-expected result is particularly noticeable because some of Snap’s social media and online ad peers, like Reddit, have beaten analyst estimates for ARPU during this earnings season.
Snap CEO Evan Spiegel said in an investor letter that the company’s “topline growth” was impacted by a bungled update to its adverting platform that has since been addressed, the “timing of Ramadan” and the “effects of the de minimis changes,” referring to President Donald Trump’s trade policies.
Spiegel said that the advertising platform update, made to improve advertiser performance, resulted in some online ad campaigns clearing “the auction at substantially reduced prices.” Now that Snap has “reverted this change,” the company’s “advertising revenue growth has improved as advertisers adjust their bid strategies to achieve their objectives,” the executive wrote.
In April, Snap reported first-quarter earnings in which it declined to provide guidance due to macroeconomic uncertainties that could impact its online ad business.
The company said its second-quarter sales grew 9% year over year while it recorded a net loss of $262.6 million. Snap’s net loss during the same quarter last year was $248.6 million.
Adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, or EBITDA, for the second quarter came in at $41 million, trailing the $53 million that StreetAccount was projecting.
Snap said third-quarter revenue will come in between $1.475 billion and $1.505 billion, ahead of Wall Street estimates of $1.475 billion.
The company said adjusted EBITDA for the third quarter will be in the range between $110 million and $135 million. That figure’s midpoint of $122.5 million is higher than StreetAccount’s projections of $116 million.
Snap said third-quarter global daily active users will total 476 million, roughly in line with the 475.7 million StreetAccount is expecting.
The company’s Snapchat+ subscription service is approaching 16 million in the second quarter, representing a 42% year-over-year increase, Spiegel wrote in the investor letter. Snap’s subscription service is the “largest driver” to the company’s Other Revenue category, rising 64% year over year to $171 million in the second quarter, Spiegel said.
Snap’s adjusted operating expenses for the second quarter rose 10% year over year to $654 million, Spiegel said in the letter.
Spiegel said in the investor letter that it will be “distributing” its engineering teams to “directly support” its business functions, resulting in its core applications team reporting to tech chief Bobby Murphy. The monetization engineering team will be reporting to business chief Ajit Mohan.
“Our Chief Information Officer and Chief Information Security Officer will report to me and lead enterprise-wide foundational infrastructure and platform integrity,” Spiegel said in the letter. “This new, distributed structure will empower our teams to take greater ownership and drive continued innovation for our community and advertising partners.”
Eric Young, Snap’s senior vice president of engineering who joined the social media company in 2023 from Google, is leaving the company to “pursue a new opportunity,” Spiegel said in the letter.
Last Thursday, Amazonreported second-quarter earnings in which its online ad sales rose 23% year over year to $15.69 billion, while Redditreported second-quarter revenue that jumped 78% year over year to $500 million.
Alphabet reported its second-quarter earnings on July 23 that beat on the top and bottom lines. Meta said on July 30 that its second-quarter sales grew 22% year over year to $47.52 billion.
Here’s how the company did based on average analysts’ estimates compiled by LSEG:
Loss: Loss per share of 24 cents.
Revenue: $61 million vs. $55.2 million expected
The virtual care company’s revenue increased 49% in its second quarter from $41.21 million a year earlier. The company reported a net loss of $5.31 million, or a 24-cent loss per share, compared to a net loss of $10.69 million, or $1.40 loss per share, during the same period last year.
“We believe our Q2 performance reflects Omada’s ability to capture tailwinds in cardiometabolic care, to effectively commercialize our GLP-1 Care Track, and to leverage advances in artificial intelligence for the benefit of our members,” Omada CEO Sean Duffy said in a release.
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For its full year, Omada expects to report revenue between $235 million to $241 million, while analysts were expecting $222 million. The company said it expects to report an adjusted EBITDA loss of $9 million to $5 million for the full year, while analysts polled by FactSet expected a wider loss of $20.2 million.
Omada, founded in 2012, offers virtual care programs to support patients with chronic conditions like prediabetes, diabetes and hypertension. The company describes its approach as a “between-visit care model” that is complementary to the broader health-care ecosystem.
The stock opened at $23 in its debut on the Nasdaq in June. At market close on Thursday, shares closed at $19.46.
Omada said it finished its second quarter with 752,000 total members, up 52% year over year.
The company will discuss the results during its quarterly call with investors at 4:30 p.m. ET.
WASHINGTON, DC August 6: US President Donald Trump shakes hands with CEO of Apple Tim Cook during a meeting in the Oval Office of the White House on Wednesday August 6, 2025.
Demetrius Freeman | The Washington Post | Getty Images
Apple CEO Tim Cook is doing what he can to appease the commander in chief, without making that ultimate concession.
Cook on Wednesday appeared at the White House with President Trump to announce plans to spend about $600 billion over four years in the U.S. Apple didn’t announce the made-in-USA iPhone that Trump wants, but Cook got to tout Apple’s position on U.S. production.
Some of Apple’s most valuable parts, such as its glass and facial recognition sensor, are made by U.S. companies that Apple has worked with for years. Final assembly is only a small, though very critical, part of iPhone production.
“The final assembly that you focus on, that will be elsewhere for a while,” Cook said Wednesday in the Oval Office.
Trump appeared happy enough, for now.
“He makes many of the components here, and we’ve been talking about it,” Trump said. “The whole thing is set up in other places, and it’s been there for a long time in terms of cost and all, but I think we may incentivize him enough that one day he’ll be bringing that back.”
Experts said Cook’s announcement seemed designed to get Apple out of Trump’s crosshairs with respect to tariffs. Trump announced during the public meeting that the administration planned to place a tariff on chips that would double their price, but Apple — which relies on hundreds of different chips for its devices — would be exempt.
“CEOs are realizing that they do have to do something, and what they’ve discovered is that if they give the president something to brag about without destroying their company, that the problem might go away for a certain amount of time,” said Peter Cohan, professor of strategy and entrepreneurship at Babson College who has written case studies on Apple.
The gambit worked. Apple stock rose 5% on Wednesday and another 3% on Thursday.
“What Tim Cook demonstrated in the first administration was a real savvy navigation of the treacherous waters,” said Nancy Tengler, CEO of Laffer Tengler Investments, which holds a position in Apple. “I thought this announcement was super-important symbolically, because the president is looking for headlines.”
What Apple announced
A gift given by Apple CEO Tim Cook to U.S. President Donald Trump stands on President Trump’s table, as they present Apple’s announcement of a $100 billion investment in U.S. manufacturing, in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., August 6, 2025.
Jonathan Ernst | Reuters
The centerpiece of Apple’s announcement was the so-called American Manufacturing Program, which Apple said was designed to incentivize other companies to make parts for computers in the U.S.
By Apple committing to purchase parts and expand its relationship with U.S. suppliers, it could give those companies the skills and capacity to expand their business. And it lets Apple take some credit for supporting the 450,000 total jobs at its suppliers.
A closer look at the members of the program shows that Apple is leaning on some of its longest-tenured partners. All together, Apple said that its U.S. suppliers are on track to make 19 billion chips for its products this year. That level of business doesn’t appear overnight.
For example, Apple said that all of its cover glass for iPhones and Apple Watches would be made by Corning, in Kentucky, and that it would spend $2.5 billion on that effort. It’s a powerful symbol — while the phone might be screwed together in China or India, the surface that users touch around the world will be made in the U.S.
But Apple has pointed to Corning as a critical American supplier in the past. The company’s glass has been used on the iPhone since its first version in 2007. While Apple typically doesn’t let its suppliers talk about their relationships, former COO Jeff Williams hailed Corning’s glass in 2017, when it got an “investment” from the Apple Advanced Manufacturing Fund. Apple followed that up with a $250 million commitment in 2019, and $45 million in 2021.
Analysts are skeptical that the partnership could substantially improve Corning’s revenue. Morgan Stanley analysts wrote on Thursday that Corning “already produces 100% of the cover glass for Apple’s phones and tablets,” adding that Corning’s glass business called Specialty Materials is worth about $2 billion per year.
Apple also highlighted its partnership with Coherent, a longtime supplier of lasers for Apple’s facial recognition hardware, which is made in Texas. Morgan Stanley pegged the business at about $100 million per year, and said Apple has options including Lumentum and Sony.
The iPhone maker said it expanded a partnership with Texas Instruments to make chips in Texas and Utah. Texas Instruments has long supplied chips for the iPhone, such as circuits to control USB interfaces or power displays. Apple said it would partner with Samsung, another key supplier of parts like iPhone displays, to launch an “innovative new technology for making chips,” without offering additional details.
Apple declared that it will partner directly with companies in the semiconductor chain, even if they typically sell services or goods to Apple suppliers. Other partnerships are with Applied Materials, a tooling company, GlobalFoundries, a chip foundry, and GlobalWafers America, which is suppling Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company and Texas Instruments with made-in-USA wafers, the starting point for a batch of chips.
GlobalFoundries manufactures chips for Broadcom, which supplies wireless chips for iPhones. Both will work with Apple to develop and manufacture 5G components in the U.S.
Meanwhile, Apple will buy millions of advanced chips made by TSMC in Arizona, where it will be the factory’s largest customer. Cook joined former President Biden at the plant in 2022 and committed to buying chips from the factory.
Apple said it would invest in and become a customer at an Arizona Amkor facility, which packages and tests chips, the final stage before installation in a computer.
Apple also said it would expand existing data centers for artificial intelligence in North Carolina, Iowa, Nevada and Oregon. It’s highlighted these data centers in the past in spending commitments.
While Apple’s announcement sent partner stocks up, JPMorgan Chase analysts warned in a note on Thursday that “the new and expanded engagements might not be completely incremental to global revenues and outlook.”
Trump had a different take.
“Oh, I love that you’re doing this,” the president said, after reading a list of Apple’s commitments.
‘Cost of doing business’
Apple has little to worry about when it comes to who will hold the company accountable for its promises. The company doesn’t break out U.S. spending, and most of Apple’s suppliers are contractually required to keep the information secret. Apple doesn’t report how much its new campuses in Austin or North Carolina end up costing.
Additionally, the $600 billion headline number likely includes lots of regular expenses.
Apple said in February that its $500 billion commitment included payments to U.S. suppliers, direct employment, data centers for Apple Intelligence and corporate facilities, as well as spending on Apple TV+ productions in 20 states.
Apple started publicly announcing U.S. spending during Trump’s first administration in 2018, at a rate of about $70 billion per year. In February, the company committed to $125 billion per year. Wednesday’s announcement brings that figure to $150 billion annually.
That’s still a fraction of Apple’s total spending.
In Apple’s fiscal 2024, Apple spent $210 billion globally on cost of goods sold, $57.5 billion on operating expenses, and $9.45 billion in capital expenditures for nearly $275 billion in global spending during the period.
Teffler said she didn’t think the newly announced spending would be material to Apple’s profitability, especially since it already has relationships with the various companies such as Corning.
“They’re going to spend money somewhere,” Tegler said.
Wedbush analyst Dan Ives, who previously predicted a made-in-USA iPhone would cost billions to produce and would leave consumers paying $3,500, said the Wednesday announcements indicate a much different approach. He said it’s “the cost of doing business.”
The company is making GPT-5 available to everyone, including its free users. OpenAI said the model is smarter, faster and “a lot more useful,” particularly across domains like writing, coding and health care.
“I tried going back to GPT-4, and it was quite miserable,” OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said in a briefing with reporters.
Since launching its AI chatbot ChatGPT in 2022, OpenAI has rocketed into the mainstream. The company said it expects to hit 700 million weekly active users on ChatGPT this week, and it is in talks with investors about a potential stock sale at a valuation of roughly $500 billion, as CNBC previously reported.
OpenAI said GPT-5’s hallucination rate is lower, which means the model fabricates answers less frequently. The company said it also carried out extensive safety evaluations while developing GPT-5, including 5,000 hours of testing.
Instead of outright refusing to answer users’ questions if they are potentially risky, GPT-5 will use “safe completions,” OpenAI said. This means the model will give high-level responses within safety constraints that can’t be used to cause harm.
“GPT-5 has been trained to recognize when a task can’t be finished, avoid speculation and can explain limitations more clearly, which reduces unsupported claims compared to prior models,” said Michelle Pokrass, a post-training lead at OpenAI.
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During the briefing, OpenAI demonstrated how GPT-5 can be used for “vibe coding,” which is a term for when users generate software with AI based on a simple written prompt.
The company asked GPT-5 to create a web app that could help an English speaker learn French. The app had to have an engaging theme and include activities like flash cards and quizzes as well as a way to track daily progress. OpenAI submitted the same prompt into two GPT-5 windows, and it generated two different apps within seconds.
The apps had “some rough edges,” an OpenAI lead said, but users can make additional tweaks to the AI-generated software, like changing the background or adding additional tabs, as they see fit.
GPT-5 is rolling out to OpenAI’s Free, Plus, Pro and Team users on Thursday. This launch will be the first time that Free users have access to a reasoning model, which is a type of model that “thinks,” or carries out an internal chain of thought, before responding. If Free users hit their usage cap, they’ll have access to GPT-5 mini.
OpenAI’s Plus users have higher usage limits, and Pro users have unlimited access to GPT-5 as well as access to GPT-5 Pro. ChatGPT Edu and ChatGPT Enterprise users will get access to GPT-5 roughly a week from Thursday.
“It’s hard to believe it’s only been two and a half years since @sama joined us in Redmond to show the world GPT-4 for the first time in Bing, and it’s incredible to see how far we’ve come since that moment,” Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella wrote in a Thursday X post, referring to OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s appearance at Microsoft headquarters in Washington in February 2023.
The new model is coming to Microsoft products Thursday, according to a company blog post. Microsoft 365 Copilot is getting GPT-5, as well as the Copilot for consumers and the Azure AI Foundry that developers can use to incorporate AI models into third-party applications.
Box, a company that helps enterprises manage their computer files, has been testing GPT-5 across a wide variety of data sets in recent weeks.
Aaron Levie, the CEO of Box, said previous AI models have failed many of the company’s most advanced tests because they struggle to make sense of complex math or logic within long documents. But Levie said GPT-5 is a “complete breakthrough.”
“The model is able to retain way more of the information that it’s looking at, and then use a much higher level of reasoning and logic capabilities to be able to make decisions,” Levie told CNBC in an interview.
OpenAI is releasing three different versions of the model for developers through its application programming interface, or API. Those versions, gpt-5, gpt-5-mini and gpt-5-nano, are designed for different cost and latency needs.
Earlier this week, OpenAI released two open-weight language models for the first time since it rolled out GPT-2 in 2019. Those models were built to serve as lower-cost options that developers, researchers and companies can easily run and customize.
But with GPT-5, OpenAI also has a broader consumer audience in mind. The company said interacting with the model feels natural and “more human.”
Altman said GPT-5 is like having a team of Ph.D.-level experts on hand at any time.
“People are limited by ideas, but not really the ability to execute, in many new ways,” he said.