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R.J. Scaringe, Rivian’s 35-year-old CEO, introduces his company’s R1T all-electric pickup and all-electric R1S SUV at Los Angeles Auto Show in Los Angeles, California, November 27, 2018.
Mike Blake | Reuters

Rivian Automotive, the electric vehicle maker backed by Amazon and Ford, priced its IPO on Tuesday at $78 a share, according to a person familiar with the matter who asked not to be named because the sale hasn’t been announced yet. The deal values Rivian at $66.5 billion.

Should underwriters exercise their full purchase option, the company will have a market cap of over $68 billion. The stock will trade on the Nasdaq under ticker symbol RIVN.

Reuters and the Wall Street Journal reported on the IPO price earlier. A Rivian spokesperson declined to comment.

Last week, Rivian increased the expected price range to between $72 and $74 from a previous range of $57 to $62. At its $78 offer price, Rivian is already worth almost as much as Ford ($79 billion) and General Motors ($85 billion). That’s all before the company has even started generating real revenue.

Rivian said in its prospectus that it will lose up to $1.28 billion in the third quarter, while revenue will range from zero to $1 million. It’s the latest EV company to attract hefty investor capital at a stratospheric price without yet proving that it has a sustainable business model.

Lucid Motors is worth $72.5 billion even though the company just began production of its first cars. Nikola’s market cap was higher than Ford’s at one point last year, despite the company having no revenue. It’s now worth less than $6 billion, after a short-selling firm accused the company of making “an Ocean of Lies.”

Investors are continuously trying to hop on the next Tesla. Elon Musk’s company topped $1 trillion in market value last month and is now the fifth most-valuable U.S. company.

While Rivian is still effectively pre-revenue, the company said in its prospectus that it has a backlog of 55,400 pre-orders for its R1T and R1S electric vehicles. The R1T is a truck that starts at $67,500, and the R1S is an SUV starting at $70,000, according to Rivian’s website.

The company said it expects to fill those orders by the end of 2023. Additionally, Amazon has ordered 100,000 vehicles to be delivered by Rivian by 2030, and the companies plan to have 10,000 new Rivian-Amazon delivery vehicles on the road as early as next year. Amazon is pushing its fleet to renewable energy sources, and said in 2019 that it was purchasing thousands of vehicles from Rivian.

Amazon, which invested more than $1.3 billion into Rivian, owned 22.4% of the company’s Class A shares prior to the IPO. That stake is worth about $12.5 billion at the offer price. Ford owned 14.4% of Class A stock before the offering, a stake now valued at $8 billion.

Rivian says its factory in Illinois has the capacity to produce up to 150,000 vehicles per year. The company had over 6,000 employees as of the end of June.

— CNBC’s Lora Kolodny and Annie Palmer contributed to this report

WATCH: Should you believe the Rivian hype?

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Broadcom earnings primer: AI chip demand and growth are key

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Broadcom earnings primer: AI chip demand and growth are key

Broadcom CEO Hock Tan.

Lucas Jackson | Reuters

Broadcom is scheduled to report earnings for its fiscal third quarter after the close of regular trading on Thursday.

Here’s what analysts are expecting, according to a consensus from LSEG.

  • Earnings per share: $1.65
  • Revenue: $15.83 billion

Broadcom, which develops custom chips for Google and other huge cloud companies and also makes networking gear needed to tie thousands of artificial intelligence chips together, is expected to report revenue growth of 21% from $13.07 billion a year ago.

Analysts project revenue growth will hold steady the rest of this year and accelerate a bit in 2026.

Broadcom has been one of the chief beneficiaries of the AI boom thanks largely to its accelerator chips, which the company calls XPUs. The processors are generally simpler and less expensive to operate than Nvidia’s graphics processing units, or GPUs, and they’re designed to run specific AI programs efficiently.

Analysts at Cantor Fitzgerald wrote in a report last week that they expect to see increased signs of demand from Google and Meta.

“Additionally, all eyes will turn towards any visibility of current AI Custom Silicon engagements converting into customers with high-volume ramps in sight,” wrote the analysts, who recommend buying the stock.

The analysts estimate that custom silicon could generate $25 billion to $30 billion in revenue for Broadcom next year and more than $40 billion by around 2027. The company generated total revenue of $51.6 billion in the latest fiscal year.

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Shares of Broadcom are up 30% this year and have almost doubled in the past 12 months, lifting the company’s market cap to $1.4 trillion.

In the fiscal second quarter, AI revenue jumped 46% from a year earlier to more than $4.4 billion, with 40% from networking. CEO Hock Tan said that number should reach $5.1 billion in the third quarter, “as our hyperscale partners continue to invest.”

Some of Broadcom’s expansion has been fueled by acquisitions, most notably the purchase of server virtualization software vendor VMware for $61 billion in 2023. VMware is key to Broadcom’s infrastructure software business, which accounted for 44% of sales in the most recent quarter.

WATCH: Nvidia has best percentage of revenue from AI

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Salesforce slump deepens as stock drops 7% on disappointing guidance

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Salesforce slump deepens as stock drops 7% on disappointing guidance

Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff attends the 55th annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Jan. 23, 2025.

Halil Sagirkaya | Anadolu | Getty Images

A bad year just got worse for Salesforce.

Following a disappointing revenue forecast in its quarterly earnings report late Wednesday, Salesforce’s stock slumped 8%, bringing its decline for 2025 to 28%. That’s the worst performance in large-cap tech.

Revenue increased 10% in the fiscal second quarter from a year earlier, cracking double-digit growth for the first time since early 2024. Sales of $10.24 billion topped the average analyst estimate of $10.14 billion, and earnings per share also exceeded expectations.

However, for the fiscal third quarter, Salesforce said revenue will be $10.24 billion to $10.29 billion, while analysts were expecting $10.29 billion, according to LSEG.

Salesforce regularly touts its investments in artificial intelligence and the advancements in its software as a service, or SaaS, but the company hasn’t been lifted by the AI boom in the same way as many of its tech peers — particularly those focused on infrastructure.

There’s also a concern on Wall Street that AI is going to eat away at much of the software sector.

“While the investor community oozes angst over the future of SaaS, the here and now from Salesforce, while impressive at scale, is not enough to reshape the narrative,” wrote analysts at KeyBanc Capital Markets, in a report on Wednesday. The analysts have a buy rating on the stock.

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Salesforce is dealing with challenges selling marketing and commerce products, Robin Washington, the company’s president and chief operating and financial officer, said on a conference call with analysts.

In its earnings release, Salesforce said it closed over 12,500 total deals for Agentforce, which can automate the handling of customer service questions. That includes 6,000 paid deals. The company said that over 40% of bookings for Agentforce and its data cloud came from existing customers.

CEO Marc Benioff maintained his optimistic tone, downplaying concerns about the AI threat to software and telling analysts on the earnings call that “we are seeing one of the greatest transformations” in the space.

“To hear some of this nonsense that’s out there in social media or in other places, and people say the craziest things, but it’s not grounded in any customer truth,” Benioff said.

Salesforce kept its full-year revenue outlook but now sees higher earnings. The company is targeting $11.33 to $11.37 in adjusted earnings per share on $41.1 billion to $41.3 billion in revenue.

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We're seeing an incredible transformation in enterprise, says Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff

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Figma’s stock slumps 18% after first earnings report to lowest since IPO

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Figma's stock slumps 18% after first earnings report to lowest since IPO

Figma shares continue to plunge on debut earnings call

Figma shares plummeted nearly 20% on Thursday, falling to the lowest price since the design software vendor’s IPO in July after the company reported earnings for the first time as a public company.

Results for the second quarter were largely inline with expectations, as Figma had issued preliminary results a little over a month ago. Revenue increased 41% from a year earlier to $249.6 million, slightly topping analyst estimates of $248.8 million, according to LSEG.

Analysts at Piper Sandler described the report as “largely a non-event,” but noted that the “shares have witnessed hyper-volatility” following their 250% surge in the trading debut.

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Since closing at $115.50 on its first day, the stock has lost more than half its value, lowering the company’s market cap to about $27 billion.

For the third quarter, Figma forecasted revenue of between $263 million and $265 million, which would represent about 33% growth at the middle of the range. The LSEG consensus was $256.8 million.

Figma’s IPO was significant for Silicon Valley and the tech sector broadly as it represented one of the highest-profile offerings in years and signaled Wall Street’s growing appetite for growth. The market had been in a multiyear lull that began in early 2022, when inflation was soaring and interest rates were on the rise.

Figma reported a 129% net retention rate, a reflection of expansion with existing customers. The figure was down from 132% in the first quarter.

— CNBC’s Jordan Novet contributed to this report.

WATCH: Figma shares plunge

Figma shares continue to plunge on debut earnings call

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