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In this photo illustration, the Disney + logo is displayed on the screen of a TV on December 26, 2019 in Paris, France.

Chesnot | Getty Images

Disney shares are down about 9% Thursday after the company reported subscriber losses at Disney+ during the most recent quarter.

The company, which posted profit and revenue for the period that were in line with Wall Street estimates, reported a loss of 4 million Disney+ subscribers. That downtick was offset by price increases, which led to a narrowing of operating losses at the streaming unit by $400 million for the fiscal second quarter.

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Still, Wall Street expected a gain of more than 1 million Disney+ subscribers, according to StreetAccount, and the surprise subscriber loss spooked the Street.

Shares of the company were trading at around $92 per share Thursday. The stock had been up over 16% so far this year as of Wednesday’s close.

The drop was set to erase around $15 billion from the company’s market value.

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Disney’s stock sank on Thursday following its fiscal second-quarter earnings report.

Disney will face headwinds from reductions in ad budget, intense streaming competition with Netflix’s new ad tier and continued economic uncertainty, according to a note from Paul Verna, principal analyst at research firm Insider Intelligence.

“While Disney managed to stem its streaming revenue losses, it did so mainly by raising prices, and that strategy is not sustainable in the long term,” Verna wrote. “Disney plans another price hike later this year, but it will soon run out of headroom for further increases.”

Analysts at SVB MoffettNathanson lowered their price target for the stock by $3 to $127 following the report but maintained the firm’s outperform rating. The firm sees aggregate subscriptions being roughly flat in the fiscal third quarter and rising in the fiscal fourth quarter.

Tim Nollen, Macquarie senior media tech analyst, also maintained an outperform rating, noting Disney “has the essential assets to successfully transition to streaming, but it’s a multi-faceted effort.”

“Disney is making headway in its cost-saving and operating-efficiency efforts amid a deteriorating linear TV business, both structurally and cyclically,” Nollen wrote in the note.

Disney CEO Bob Iger is overseeing a broad restructuring at the company, including around 7,000 total job cuts, which are planned to be completed before summer.

The company also said Wednesday it would add Hulu content to its Disney+ streaming app, while expecting to raise the price of its ad-free streaming service later this year.

Shares of fellow streams Warner Bros. Discovery and Paramount also fell Thursday, down roughly 4% each. Netflix shares were little changed.

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Brad Gerstner on OpenAI’s dealmaking with AMD, Nvidia: ‘The best chips will win’

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Brad Gerstner on OpenAI's dealmaking with AMD, Nvidia: 'The best chips will win'

Brad Gerstner, Altimeter Founder and CEO, speaks at the Delivering Alpha conference in New York City on Sept. 28, 2023.

Adam Jeffery | CNBC

Investor Brad Gerstner cautioned Monday that OpenAI‘s deals with Nvidia and AMD are purely announcements, not deployments.

“Now we will see what gets delivered,” the Altimeter Capital founder told CNBC. “Ultimately, the best chips will win.”

OpenAI’s megadeal with AMD and its relentless push to expand artificial intelligence capabilities underscores the intensifying competitive landscape.

Gerstner said the deals provide “more evidence that the world will remain compute-constrained despite best efforts to bring massive supply online.”

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Experts say it’s also another validation of the AI arms race heating up, with AI a key element in the geopolitical race between the U.S. and China.

OpenAI’s Chinese rival DeepSeek sent shockwaves last year when it claimed to have a lower-cost AI model than its U.S. peer. And Deepseek has continued to innovate, delivering new open-sourced models using domestically made AI chips.

Last week, the U.S. government issued a report warning of DeepSeek’s national security concerns, Axios reported.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology’s Center for AI Standards and Innovation said DeepSeek provides Chinese Communist Party views more frequently than U.S. models, according to Axios.

OpenAI’s partnership with AMD is raising hopes that it is taking the right steps to increase production and build more complex AI models.

“What we’re really seeing is a world where there’s going to be absolute compute scarcity, because there’s going to be so much demand for AI services, and not just from OpenAI, really from the whole ecosystem,” OpenAI President told CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street” Monday. “And so that’s why it’s just so important for this whole industry to come together.”

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AppLovin stock tanks on report SEC is investigating company over data-collection practices

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AppLovin stock tanks on report SEC is investigating company over data-collection practices

The AppLovin logo arranged on a smartphone in New York, US, on Wednesday, Feb. 26, 2025.

Gabby Jones | Bloomberg | Getty Images

AppLovin shares plummeted on Monday after Bloomberg reported that the SEC has been probing the mobile advertising company over its data-collection practices.

The agency has been looking into whether the company violated agreements on pushing targeted ads to consumers, Bloomberg reported, citing people familiar with the matter. The report said that the SEC is responding to a whistleblower complained filed this year along with multiple short-seller reports, and added that neither the company nor its officials have been accused of wrongdoing.

An AppLovin spokesperson said the company doesn’t typically comment on the “existence or non-existence” of regulatory matters.

“That said, as a global public company, we regularly engage with regulators and if we get inquiries we address them in the ordinary course,” the spokesperson said in a statement. “Material developments, if any, would be disclosed through the appropriate public channels.”

The stock dropped 14% in regular trading after the report, which landed shortly before market close. It fell another 5% in extended trading.

AppLovin’s stock has been on a tear, jumping about 80% this year after soaring more than 700% in 2024. The surge has been driven by the company’s artificial intelligence technology that’s allowed it to provide better ad targeting capabilities to brands.

Last month, AppLovin was added to the S&P 500, replacing MarketAxess Holdings, at the same time that Robinhood joined the index in place of Caesars Entertainment.

AppLovin made the move into the benchmark despite a short-seller’s effort to keep it out.

In March, Fuzzy Panda Research advised the committee for the large-cap U.S. index to keep AppLovin from becoming a constituent. AppLovin shares dropped 15% in December, when the committee picked Workday to join the S&P 500.

Three notable short-seller firms, including Fuzzy Panda, have slammed AppLovin of late. The latest was Muddy Waters Research, which in March said the company’s ad tactics “systematically” violate app stores’ terms of service by “impermissibly extracting proprietary IDs from MetaSnap, TikTok, Reddit, Google, and others.” In so doing, AppLovin is funneling targeted ads to users without their consent, Muddy Waters said.

Fuzzy Panda and Culper Research put out reports the prior month, taking aim at AppLovin’s AXON software, which drove its earnings growth and stock surge. The shares dropped 12% on Feb. 26, the day of the short reports.

After those reports were published, AppLovin CEO Adam Foroughi wrote a blog post, defending his company’s technology and practices, and taking aim at the short sellers trying to profit from AppLovin’s decline.

WATCH: AppLovin CEO on company’s bid to buy TikTok

AppLovin CEO Adam Foroughi on its bid to buy TikTok

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Figma’s stock pops 7% after OpenAI CEO Altman touts ChatGPT integration

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Figma's stock pops 7% after OpenAI CEO Altman touts ChatGPT integration

Figma signage appears at the New York Stock Exchange in New York as the company prepares for its shares to begin trading on July 31, 2025.

Michael Nagle | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Figma shares jumped 7% on Monday after the design software vendor’s technology was promoted by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman in an onstage demo at his company’s annual DevDay conference in San Francisco.

Altman discussed Figma’s integration into ChatGPT, which has more than 800 million monthly users. He showed how third-party applications could plug in with OpenAI’s Apps SDK, or software development framework.

“When someone’s using ChatGPT, you’ll be able to find an app by asking for it by name,” Altman said. “For example, you could sketch out a product flow for ChatGPT and then say, Figma, turn this sketch into a workable diagram. The Figma app will take over respond and complete the action.”

In addition to asking for Figma’s help by name in ChatGPT, the assistant can also suggest Figma when it’s relevant, Figma product manager Luke Zhang said in a blog post.

The rally for Figma, at its high point, was the steepest since the day of the company’s public market debut on the New York Stock Exchange in July.

Figma has been ramping up its own tools for working on app and website designs using generative AI models from OpenAI and other providers.

Subscribers to products that connect to the Apps SDK will be able to log in without leaving their ChatGPT conversations, Altman said. He said people working on products in Figma can also launch the FigJam tool to keep working on development ideas. Apps SDK is based on the Model Context Protocol, an open standard that OpenAI rival Anthropic introduced last year.

Software developers will be able to submit apps for review later in 2025, Altman said.

Over time, OpenAI will offer many ways to generate revenue through third-party integrations, Altman said. Last week, OpenAI announced a feature allowing people to buy products listed on Etsy through ChatGPT.

WATCH: Figma shares slide on revenue growth rate outlook

Figma shares slide on revenue growth rate outlook

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