Technology

Doordash stock sinks 9% as company misses earnings, says it expects further spending

Published

6 hours ago

November 5, 2025

admin

A DoorDash bag on a bicycle in New York, US, on Tuesday, May 6, 2025.

Yuki Iwamura | Bloomberg | Getty Images

DoorDash reported third-quarter earnings that missed analyst expectations and said it expects to spend “several hundred million dollars” on new initiatives and development in 2026.

The stock sank 9% following the report.

Here’s how the company did compared to LSEG estimates:

Earnings: 55 cents per share vs 69 cents per share expected
Revenue: $3.45 billion vs $3.36 billion expected.

“We wish there was a way to grow a baby into an adult without investment, or to see the baby grow into an adult overnight, but we do not believe this is how life or business works,” the company wrote in its earnings release to explain the boosted spending.

DoorDash said it is developing a new global tech platform that progressed in 2025 but is expected to accelerate in 2026, noting the direct and opportunity costs in the near term. The company announced its Dot autonomous delivery robot in September.

The food delivery platform’s revenue increased 27% from a year earlier.

DoorDash posted net income of $244 million, or 55 cents per share, in Q3, up from $162 million, or 38 cents per share, a year ago.

Chinese autonomous driving firm Pony.ai sees shares drop 12% in Hong Kong debut

Published

3 hours ago

November 6, 2025

admin

A Pony.ai autonomous car.

Pony.ai

China’s Pony.ai on Thursday saw its shares drop over 12%, while rival WeRide fell nearly 8% as the autonomous driving companies began trading in Hong Kong.

Pony.ai and WeRide, which are already listed in the U.S., raised 6.71 billion Hong Kong dollars (about $860 million) and HK$2.39 billion, respectively in their initial public offerings.

The companies are striving to keep pace with larger competitors such as Baidu‘s Apollo Go in China and Alphabet‘s Waymo in the U.S. amid growing interest in autonomous technologies.

Pony.ai and WeRide, both headquartered in Guangzhou, China, stated that funds would go toward scaling efforts, and the development of Level 4 autonomous driving — a measure of driving automation that does not require human monitoring or intervention under specific environments.

WeRide CEO Tony Xu Han told CNBC that proceeds from the latest fundraising would also be used to boost the company’s artificial intelligence capabilities and data center capacity.

The listings in Hong Kong come as the companies seek to expand outside of China, where they have already begun operating fully autonomous robotaxis in some cities.

The new regions include the Middle East, Europe and Asian countries such as Singapore. They have yet to receive full approvals to operate their robotaxis in most of those regions.

In the U.S., both companies are aiming for a partnership with California-based Uber to allow them to deploy their robotaxis on the firm’s ride-hailing platform after receiving regulatory approval.

However, their U.S. plans face headwinds as earlier this year the government finalized a rule effectively banning Chinese technology in connected vehicles, including self-driving systems.

“With the uncertainty in the markets around the world and the fact that there would be intense scrutiny on a Pony or WeRide trying to enter the U.S. market, a dual listing is a lot about risk mitigation,” said Tu Le, founder and managing director at Sino Auto Insights.

He added that the listings were also an acknowledgement that it’s gonna take a lot of capital and an endorsement of a market outside the U.S. for Pony.ai and WeRide to succeed.

In U.S. trading on Wednesday, shares Pony.ai closed down about 2%, while WeRide fell 5.3%.

Hong Kong IPO shift

Pony.ai and WeRide’s competing listings highlight a recent trend of Chinese companies seeking dual listings in Hong Kong, which has been a bounce-back year for the city’s IPO market.

The companies received approval from Hong Kong regulators to dual list in mid-October.

“For the HK stock exchange, clustering the listing at the same time helps to reinforce investor perception of HK as a tech-hub for Asia-focused technology companies,” Rolf Bulk, equity research analyst at New Street Research told CNBC.

In May, Chinese battery manufacturer and technology company CATL completed a secondary listing in Hong Kong, raising $5.2 billion in the world’s largest IPO so far this year.

The growing trend emerges amid geopolitical tensions and regulatory uncertainty in the U.S.

According to New Street Research’s Bulk, the Hong Kong listings for Pony.ai and WeRide will help the companies gain access to Asia-based capital and expand their presence in China and the region.

“However, it will do nothing to advance the progress of their technology stack and regulatory approvals in Western markets. If anything, gaining approval in Western markets may be more challenging with a HK secondary listing,” he added.

The listings could also help the firms keep up with competitors such as Baidu‘s Apollo Go in China and Alphabet‘s Waymo in the U.S., which currently have larger fleets.

“Pony and WeRide are right up there among the global leaders,” said Sino Auto Insights’ Le. “WeRide has diversified their service portfolio a bit more but they both see Uber and the Middle East as two viable partners in their ability to get more pilots launched outside of China.”

“Investors should pay special attention to how their technology evolves with AI and other new tools becoming more mainstream,” Le said.

— CNBC’s Elaine Yu contributed to this report.

Technology

Microsoft letting employees raise concerns about products after Middle East controversy

Published

3 hours ago

November 6, 2025

admin

Microsoft letting employees raise concerns about products after Middle East controversy

Microsoft President Brad Smith speaks at a press conference at the Representation of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia about future visions for the development and application of artificial intelligence in education in NRW in Berlin on June 4, 2025.

Soeren Stache | Picture Alliance | Getty Images

Microsoft is giving employees a way to raise concerns about the uses of its technology after controversy emerged over the company’s work in the Middle East.

An internal portal for Microsoft’s 200,000-plus workers now includes an option to request a “Trusted Technology Review,” Brad Smith, the company’s president, wrote in a memo that was disclosed in a securities filing on Wednesday. It’s designed for bringing up misgivings about the ways Microsoft builds and uses technology, he said.

“Our standard non-retaliation policy applies, and you can raise concerns anonymously,” Smith wrote.

The move comes weeks after Microsoft stopped providing some services to an Israeli defense unit. In August, The Guardian said the Israeli Defense Forces’ Unit 8200 had built a system in Microsoft’s Azure cloud for tracking Palestinians’ phone calls as part of the country’s invasion of Gaza, leading Microsoft to investigate the newspaper’s assertions.

Employees protested the company’s work with Israel, leading to firings and resignations.

Microsoft’s business has been on a tear, with its stock reaching a record last week, as OpenAI and other companies have deepened their reliance on Azure for running artificial intelligence models. Yet there’s been internal stress due to layoffs, return-to-office mandates and controversy surrounding Microsoft’s contracts.

A media report in July also described the U.S. Defense Department’s dependence on Microsoft engineers located in China.

Microsoft, which celebrated its 50th birthday in April, now sees opportunities to boost its governance.

“We are working to strengthen our existing pre-contract review process for evaluating engagements that require additional human rights due diligence,” Smith wrote.

WATCH: Microsoft sees ‘huge’ challenge and great opportunity as global economy enters a new phase, president says

Microsoft president: 'Huge' challenge and great opportunity as global economy enters a new phase

Technology

Snap shares rocket 15% on strong forecast, $400 million Perplexity deal

Published

7 hours ago

November 5, 2025

admin

Snap shares rocket 15% on strong forecast, 0 million Perplexity deal

Snap shares climbed 15% on Wednesday after the company issued its third-quarter earnings, reporting revenue that beat analysts expectations and a $500 million stock repurchase program.

Here is how the company did compared with Wall Street’s expectations:

Earnings per share: Loss of 6 cents. That figure is not comparable to analysts’ estimates.
Revenue: $1.51 billion vs. $1.49 billion expected, according to LSEG
Global daily active users: 477 million vs. 476 million expected, according to StreetAccount
Global average revenue per user (ARPU): $3.16 vs. $3.13 expected, according to StreetAccount

Snap also announced that it is partnering with the startup Perplexity AI, which “will integrate its conversational search directly into Snapchat.” The feature is set to appear in Snapchat starting in early 2026, Snap said.

“Perplexity will pay Snap $400 million over one year, through a combination of cash and equity, as we achieve global rollout,” Snap said in the letter. “Revenue from the partnership is expected to begin contributing in 2026.”

The partnership represents “a first step in Snap’s effort to make Snapchat a platform where leading AI companies can connect with its global community in creative and trusted ways,” the two companies said in their announcement.

In the company’s earnings call, Snap CEO Evan Spiegel said Perplexity will have “default placement in our chat inbox” and the startup will “control the responses from their chatbot inside of Snapchat.”

Although Snap will not be selling “advertising against the Perplexity responses,” Spiegel said that the integration “will help Perplexity drive additional subscribers, which I think is something that will be valuable to their business.”

“We have a really unique opportunity ahead to help distribute AI agents through our chat interface,” Spiegel said.

While Snapchat users will still be able to engage with the company’s My AI chatbot, the integrated Perplexity AI service will provide them with “real-time answers from credible sources and explore new topics within the app,” the companies said.

Regarding Snap’s expensive foray into developing augmented reality glasses, Spiegel said the company plans to create a separate subsidiary around the Specs AR glasses to speed up development with partners.

Snap said fourth-quarter sales will come in between $1.68 billion and $1.71 billion. That figure’s midpoint of $1.695 billion is slightly ahead of Wall Street expectations of $1.69 billion.

For the third quarter, Snap said sales grew 10% year over year while it logged a net loss of $104 million. During the same quarter last year, Snap recorded a net loss of $153 million.

The Snapchat parent said that third-quarter adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, or EBITDA, came in at $182 million, ahead of the $125 million that StreetAccount was projecting.

The company also said that its adjusted EBITDA for the fourth quarter will be between $280 million and $310 million, which tops StreetAccount’s projections of $255.4 million.

Snap shares were down 32% for the year, as of Wednesday’s close, compared to the Nasdaq’s 22% gain.

Although the company’s shares soared as high as 25% in after-hours trading on Wednesday, they began their descent after Snap finance chief Derek Andersen detailed some of the company’s sales-related challenges on the earnings call.

“The North America LCS segment remains the primary headwind to our overall revenue growth,” said Andersen, adding that the company is seeing more growth and demand for Snap’s ad products from small-to-medium sized businesses in other regions.

In a letter to investors, Snap said that government regulations like Australia’s social media minimum age bill and related policy developments “are likely to have negative impacts on user engagement metrics that we cannot currently predict.”

“While we remain committed to our goal of serving 1 billion global monthly active users, we expect overall DAU may decline in Q4 given these internal and external factors, and as noted above we expect particularly negative impacts in certain jurisdictions,” Snap said in the letter.

The Australian senate passed the bill in November 2024, and when the law comes into effect next month, companies like Facebook and Instagram parent Meta, TikTok and Snap will be penalized if they fail to adequately prevent children under 16 from possessing accounts on their respective platforms.

Snap also said in the investor letter that the “upcoming rollout of platform-level age verification” from companies like Apple and Google could also negatively impact user metrics in the future.

Utah and California have signed online-child safety bills that put the onus on app store makers to verify user ages. Utah’s law is set to fully take effect in May 2026.

“We are also preparing for the upcoming rollout of platform-level age verification, which will use new signals provided by Apple — and soon Google — to help us better determine the age of our users and remove those we learn are under 13,” Snap said in the letter.

Snap’s warning to investors underscores how new laws, policies and regulations around the globe are beginning to impact tech firms.

In the letter, Snap also said that some of its efforts to improve monetization, such as its Snapchat+ subscription service, could result in “adverse impact on engagement metrics as these experiences are rolled out globally.”

Pinterest shares tanked on Tuesday after the company reported third-quarter results that missed on earnings per share and provided weaker-than-expected guidance. The company’s finance chief Julia Donnelly told analysts that Pinterest expects “broader trends and market uncertainty continuing with the addition of a new tariff in Q4 impacting the home furnishing category.”

Big tech companies like Meta, Alphabet and Amazon reported their latest quarterly earnings last week in which they posted solid digital advertising sales and hefty spending on AI-related computing infrastructure.

The Facebook-parent saw third-quarter sales boom 26% year-over-year to $51.24 billion, while revenue in Amazon’s online ad unit soared 24% year-over-year to $17.7 billion.

Alphabet said that its total advertising revenue for the third quarter rose 13% year-over-year to $74.18 billion, while YouTube’s online ad sales climbed 15% to $10.26 billion.

Reddit said last Thursday that third-quarter sales surged 68% year-over-year to $585 million. The company’s global daily active uniques increased 19% year-over-year to 116 million, surpassing estimates of 114 million.

WATCH: It would be irresponsible of Zuckerberg to not spend on his network of properties, says Jim Cramer.