Investors pounded cloud software stocks on Wednesday on concern that interest rates will rise for longer than previously expected.
Initially stocks moved higher as the Federal Reserve announced it would increase its benchmark rate by 75 basis points. But after Powell began speaking at the central bank’s press conference, equities reversed their gains and fell to session lows.
Jerome Powell, chair of the Federal Reserve, said data showed the “ultimate level” of rates will be higher than the U.S. central bank had projected.
Cloud stocks have been particularly sensitive to rising rates as investors prefer to own stocks with stronger current earnings that are less reliant on future growth. Bill.com, Twilio and Cloudflare each lost 10% of their value on Wednesday and are down at least 53% so far this year.
In 2022 central bankers in the U.S. and abroad have repeatedly pushed up rates to stave off quickly rising prices of food, energy and other goods. For companies that pay cash dividends to investors, such as IBM, which is the lone large-cap tech stock up for the year, the risk is lower.
But for money-losing companies — and many cloud stocks are not profitable — the calculus is completely different. Valuations stem from the present value of future cash flows. Higher interest rates imply lower cash flows.
When interest rates were low, particularly during the onset of Covid-19 in early 2020, cloud software ballooned in popularity and the stocks soared. Revenue at high-growth companies doubled or even tripled year over year. But sentiment has changed.
One gauge of cloud stocks, the WisdomTree Cloud Computing Fund, is now down 51% for 2022, compared with a 110% rise in 2020. The S&P 500 is down 21% this year.
On Wednesday the WisdomTree fund fell 7.5%, the sharpest decline since June. The technology-heavy Nasdaq Composite index fell 3.4%, while the S&P 500 was down 2.5%.
The biggest loser was ZoomInfo, a provider of data for salespeople and other workers. Henry Schuck, ZoomInfo’s founder and CEO, said on Tuesday that despite delivering 46% year-over-year revenue growth, the company has run into challenges in connection with macroeconomic conditions.
“As we made our way through Q3, we began to see increased macro pressure on deals, causing the level of deal review to increase and sales cycles to elongate further,” Schuck said on a conference call with analysts on Tuesday. “Since this started very late in the quarter, it only modestly impacted Q3 results. This elongation trend has continued into Q4, and we do expect it to impact growth in the short term.”
CrowdStrike, Qualtrics and other cloud software stocks have reported more scrutiny of deals in recent months.
On Wednesday human resources software maker Paycom announced its 33rd consecutive quarter of profitability. The stock still fell about 8% in Wednesday’s selloff.
The co-founder and CEO of sales and customer service management software company Salesforce is well aware that investors are betting big on Palantir, which offers data management software to businesses and government agencies.
“Oh my gosh. I am so inspired by that company,” Benioff told CNBC’s Morgan Brennan in a Tuesday interview at Goldman Sachs‘ Communacopia+Technology conference in San Francisco. “I mean, not just because they have 100 times, you know, multiple on their revenue, which I would love to have that too. Maybe it’ll have 1000 times on their revenue soon.”
Salesforce, a component of the Dow Jones Industrial Average, remains 10 times larger than Palantir by revenue, with over $10 billion in revenue during the latest quarter. But Palantir is growing 48%, compared with 10% for Salesforce.
Benioff added that Palantir’s prices are “the most expensive enterprise software I’ve ever seen.”
“Maybe I’m not charging enough,” he said.
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It wasn’t Benioff’s first time talking about Palantir. Last week, Benioff referenced Palantir’s “extraordinary” prices in an interview with CNBC’s Jim Cramer, saying Salesforce offers a “very competitive product at a much lower cost.”
The next day, TBPN podcast hosts John Coogan and Jordi Hays asked for a response from Alex Karp, Palantir’s co-founder and CEO.
“We are very focused on value creation, and we ask to be modestly compensated for that value,” Karp said.
The companies sometimes compete for government deals, and Benioff touted a recent win over Palantir for a U.S. Army contract.
Palantir started in 2003, four years after Salesforce. But while Salesforce went public in 2004, Palantir arrived on the New York Stock Exchange in 2020.
Palantir’s market capitalization stands at $406 billion, while Salesforce is worth $231 billion. And as one of the most frequently traded stocks on Robinhood, Palantir is popular with retail investors.
Salesforce shares are down 27% this year, the worst performance in large-cap tech.
Gemini Co-founders Tyler Winklevoss and Cameron Winklevoss attend the company’s IPO at the Nasdaq MarketSite in New York City, U.S., Sept. 12, 2025.
Jeenah Moon | Reuters
Shares of Gemini Space Station soared more than 40% on Thursday after the exchange operator raised $425 million in an initial public offering.
The stock opened at $37.01 on the Nasdaq after its IPO priced at $28. At one point, shares traded as high as $40.71.
The New York-based company priced its IPO late Thursday above this week’s expected range of $24 to $26, and an initial range of between $17 and $19. That valued the company at some $3.3 billion before trading began.
Gemini, which primarily operates as a cryptocurrency exchange, was founded by the Winklevoss brothers in 2014 and held more than $21 billion of assets on its platform as of the end of July. Per its registration with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Gemini posted a net loss of $159 million in 2024, and in the first half of this year, it lost $283 million.
The company also offers a U.S. dollar-backed stablecoin, credit cards with a crypto-back rewards program and a custody service for institutions.
The Winklevoss brothers were among the earliest bitcoin investors and first bitcoin billionaires. They have long held that bitcoin is a superior store of value than gold. On Friday morning, they told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” they see its price reaching $1 million a decade from now.
In 2013, they were the first to apply to launch a bitcoin exchange-traded fund, more than 10 years before the first bitcoin ETFs would eventually be approved. The Securities and Exchange Commission’s rejection of the application, which cited risk of fraud and market manipulation, set the stage for the bitcoin ETF debate in the years to come.
Even in the early days, when bitcoin was notorious for its extreme volatility and anti-establishment roots and shunned by Wall Street, the Winklevoss brothers were outspoken about the need for smart regulation that would establish rules for the crypto-led financial revolution.
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Opendoor co-founder and newly minted board chair Keith Rabois said remote work and a “bloated” workforce have been a drag on the company’s culture, as he vowed to slash headcount.
“There’s 1,400 employees at Opendoor. I don’t know what most of them do. We don’t need more than 200 of them,” Rabois told CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street” on Friday.
The online real-estate platform on Wednesday appointed former Shopify executive Kaz Nejatian as its new CEO after investor pressure caused his predecessor, Carrie Wheeler, to resign last month. Opendoor also named Rabois as chairman and said Eric Wu, who served as the company’s first CEO before stepping down in 2023, would return to the board.
The announcement sent Opendoor shares soaring 78% on Thursday, before the stock slid more than 12% on Friday. It is still up almost 500% this year, after an army of retail investors pushed up the stock price when hedge fund manager Eric Jackson began touting the company.
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Opendoor year-to-date stock chart.
Opendoor’s business involves using technology to buy and sell homes, pocketing the gains.
Nothing has fundamentally improved for the company since Jackson bought shares of Opendoor in July. Opendoor remains a cash-burning, low-margin business with meager near-term growth prospects.
Rabois said he has a “high level view of the strategy” that’s needed to transform Opendoor, and that the headcount reductions are necessary to resolve the company’s cash burn.
“The culture was broken,” Rabois said. “These people were working remotely. That doesn’t work. This company was founded on the principle of innovation and working together in person. We’re going to return to our roots.”
He added that Opendoor “went down this DEI path,” referring to diversity, equity and inclusion.