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Mark Zuckerberg, co-founder and CEO of Meta Platforms, in July 2021.

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Meta can thank Chinese retailers for helping lift the company’s first-quarter sales after three consecutive quarters of revenue declines.

As chief financial officer Susan Li told analysts during company’s first-quarter earnings call, the social networking giant “saw acceleration among advertisers in China targeting users and other markets, which we believe was due in part to dropping shipping costs and easing Covid lockdown for those advertisers.”

In other words, Chinese companies spent a lot of money over a three-month period ending in late March on Facebook ads intended for consumers living outside the country. It’s a sign that China’s recent easing of its zero-Covid policy has indirectly benefited Meta, with Chinese companies using Facebook and Instagram’s massive reach around the world to land new customers.

Still, Meta’s sales grew only 3% year-over-year to $27.91 billion during the first quarter, underscoring that there’s still turbulence in the digital advertising market.

Li said that Meta also saw stronger demand in the quarter as the Russia-Ukraine War passed its one-year mark as of February, but she wasn’t prepared to say that the rest of year will be smooth sailing for the company.

Meta expects “a volatile macro environment” for the rest of the year and a “challenging regulatory environment” overall, Li said, referring to European Union regulators who continue imposing tough data privacy laws and requirements that impact the company.

But the mere fact that Meta was able to turn the tide on its declining sales after a harsh period was enough to cause investors to rejoice, sending the company’s shares rising nearly 12% in after-hours trading.

Investors were also keen to hear Zuckerberg preach Meta’s “year of efficiency” that will result in some 21,000 employees exiting the company by early summer.

Zuckerberg addressed the company’s recent round of layoffs that impacted technical workers last week and reminded analysts that more job cuts will hit business groups in May.

After May, Li said that the company “will resume hiring and we would expect headcount growth in excess of 1 to 2% in 2024.”

Zuckerberg gave no signs of planning to slow down spending on the metaverse, the highly speculative bet on virtual worlds that engendered the company’s name change from Facebook announced in 2021.

Indeed the company’s Reality Labs unit, which is building the virtual reality and augmented reality technologies needed for the yet-to-be developed metaverse, logged nearly $4 billion in first-quarter losses off $339 million in sales.

The metaverse still remains a core priority for Meta, Zuckerberg said, even though it’s also working on new artificial intelligence technologies that could aid its advertising and business messaging services.

“A narrative has developed that we’re somehow moving away from focusing on the metaverse division, so I just want to say upfront that that’s not accurate,” Zuckerberg said. “We’ve been focusing on both AI and the metaverse for years now and we will continue to focus on both.”

“The two areas are also related,” he added.

Watch: Meta beats on revenue, stocks pop nearly 10 percent on revenue beat

Meta posts better-than-expected revenue in Q1

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SoftBank Group shares plunge over 9% as Asian tech stocks decline

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SoftBank Group shares plunge over 9% as Asian tech stocks decline

The logo of Japanese company SoftBank Group is seen outside the company’s headquarters in Tokyo on January 22, 2025. 

Kazuhiro Nogi | Afp | Getty Images

Shares of SoftBank Group plunged as much as 9.17% Wednesday, as technology stocks in Asia declined, tracking losses in U.S. peers overnight.

The Japanese tech-focused investment firm saw shares drop for a second consecutive session, following its announcement of a $2 billion investment in Intel. Intel shares rose 6.97% to close at $25.31 Tuesday stateside.

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SoftBank Group shares

Other Japanese tech stocks also declined, with semiconductor giant Advantest falling as much as 6.27%. Meanwhile, shares in Renesas Electronics and Tokyo Electron were last seen trading 2.46% and 0.75% lower, respectively.

Technology companies in South Korea, Taiwan and Hong Kong, also fell after U.S. tech stocks dropped overnight spurred by declines in artificial intelligence darling Nvidia‘s shares.

U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick is considering the federal government taking equity stakes in semiconductor companies that get funding under the CHIPS Act for building plants in the U.S, sources familiar with the matter told Reuters. The U.S. CHIPS and Science Act seeks to boost the country’s semiconductor industry, scientific research and innovation.

Shares of Taiwanese chip company TSMC and manufacturer Hon Hai Precision Industry — known globally as Foxconn — declined 1.69% and 2.16%, respectively. TSMC manufactures Nvidia’s high-performance graphics processing units that help power large language models, while Foxconn has a strategic partnership with Nvidia to build “AI factories.” 

Meanwhile, South Korean tech stocks mostly fell with shares of chipmaker SK Hynix down 3.33%. Samsung Electronics, however, rose 0.75%.

TSMC, Samsung and SK Hynix are among companies that have received funding under the CHIPS Act.

Over in Hong Kong, the Hang Seng Tech index lost 0.87% in early trade.

The worst performing stocks on the index were Kuaishou Technology which declined 4.8%, JD Health International which dropped 3.31% and Horizon Robotics which lost 2.29%.

Losses were also seen tech majors Alibaba Group, down 1.44%, and Xiaomi Corp which lost 1.34%.

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Palantir stock slumps 9%, falling for a fifth straight day from record

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Palantir stock slumps 9%, falling for a fifth straight day from record

CEO of Palantir Technologies Alex Karp attends the Pennsylvania Energy and Innovation Summit on the campus of Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on July 15, 2025.

Andrew Caballero-reynolds | Afp | Getty Images

Palantir‘s stock slumped more than 9% on Tuesday, falling for a fifth straight day to continue its pullback from all-time highs.

The artificial intelligence software provider’s stock has slid more than 15% over the last five trading sessions, after a stellar earnings report earlier this month propelled shares to all-time highs. The report was Palantir’s first-ever $1 billion revenue quarter.

Tuesday’s dip coincided with a broader market pullback.

Palantir is the most significant gainer to date in the S&P 500 in 2025, up more than 100%.

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Shares have more than doubled as the company benefits from ongoing AI enthusiasm, scooping up government contracts with President Donald Trump pushing to overhaul agencies.

Palantir’s ascent has pushed the company into a list of top 10 U.S. tech firms and 20 most valuable U.S. companies, while also making shares incredibly expensive to own. Its forward price-to-earnings ratio, which tracks future earnings relative to share price, has soared past 245 times.

By comparison, technology giants such as Microsoft and Apple carry a P/E of nearly 30 times and rake in significantly greater quarterly revenues. Meta‘s and Alphabet‘s P/E ratios hover in the 20s.

What to know about Palantir's engineer-led sales strategy

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Databricks says it’s valued at over $100 billion in latest funding round

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Databricks says it's valued at over 0 billion in latest funding round

Ali Ghodsi, CEO of Databricks speaks on CNBC.

CNBC

Databricks has just entered an exclusive club.

The data analytics software vendor said Tuesday that it’s raising a funding round that values the company at over $100 billion. That would make Databricks just the fourth private company to eclipse the $100 billion mark, following SpaceX, ByteDance and OpenAI, according to data from CB Insights.

Databricks CEO Ali Ghodsi told CNBC’s Brian Sullivan that the total round will exceed $1 billion. The company was last valued by private investors at $62 billion in a $10 billion financing round late last year.

In June, Databricks executives told investors the company was forecasting $3.7 billion in annualized revenue by July, with 50% year-over-year growth.

Snowflake, one of Databricks’ top rivals, is expected to generate $4.5 billion in revenue for the fiscal year that ends in January, representing annual growth of 25%, according to LSEG. Snowflake currently has a market cap of about $65 billion. Other competitors include cloud providers such as Amazon and Microsoft, which are also Databricks partners.

Ghodsi said he heard from a lot of interested investors following Figma’s IPO late last month. Shares of the design software company more than tripled in their New York Stock Exchange debut, a sign that public investors are seeking out tech offerings after in extended lull in the IPO market.

“My phone was blowing up,” Ghodsi said on Tuesday. “So yes, there’s definitely been a big push from outside.”

Figma shares have since retreated from their initial $115.50 closing price. The stock is trading at about $70, still more than double the $33 IPO price.

Ghodsi said the round will help Databricks invest in products that clients can tap when using artificial intelligence models.

Founded in 2013 and based in San Francisco, Databricks ranked third on CNBC’s 2025 Disruptor 50 list. As of June, the company employed 8,000 people. Existing investors Andreessen Horowitz, Insight Partners Thrive Capital and WCM Investment Management are buying shares, a spokesperson said.

WATCH: Databricks CEO on AI: VCs are wondering if agentic AI will actually automate work

Databricks CEO on AI: VCs are wondering if agentic AI will actually automate work

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