Software

The fair value estimate for Palo Alto Networks has been raised from US$336.70 to US$395.38, a roughly 17% increase in the underlying model, after a wave of analyst price target hikes. RBC Capital, Wells Fargo, BofA, Morgan Stanley and Truist lifted their targets into the low to mid US$400s, citing stronger cybersecurity demand as AI usage expands and customers consolidate spending with larger platforms. Goldman Sachs, Oppenheimer, BTIG and Susquehanna pointed to solid Q4 results and guidance, with broad based strength across firewalls, SASE, observability, identity and AI security modules. On the bearish side, Bernstein and Phillip Securities moved to more neutral stances while still raising targets, and Stephens and UBS described the risk or reward as more balanced with shares near peak valuation levels. The updated model trims the revenue growth assumption to about 17.31% from about 19.09% and the net profit margin outlook to about 13.84% from about 14.51%, while the future P/E rises to about 197.87x from about 164.67x and the discount rate adjusts to about 8.60% from 8.40%.

Unity Software Inc. closed at $41.16, down 1.63% from the prior session, lagging the S&P 500's 0.17% gain. The company is projected to post earnings of $0.34 per share for its upcoming quarter, a 70% increase from the same quarter last year, on revenue of $564.84 million, up 20.02%. For the full fiscal year, the Zacks Consensus Estimates project earnings of $1.21 per share and revenue of $2.22 billion, representing growth of 40.7% and 19.95%, respectively. Unity carries a Zacks Rank of #2 (Buy), with the consensus EPS estimate unchanged over the past 30 days, and trades at a forward P/E of 34.58 versus an industry average of 20.16.

Strategy Inc. shares climbed just over 16% on Friday, rising $21.67 to close at $153.92, as crypto-related stocks broadly advanced after the SEC approved a temporary "Innovation Exemption" allowing certain venues and liquidity providers to facilitate trading in tokenized U.S.-listed stocks. The move followed two weeks of choppy trading for the stock, which operates as both a Bitcoin Treasury Company and an enterprise analytics software provider. Strategy holds approximately 845,050 Bitcoin as a treasury reserve, financed through equity, debt, and preferred securities. Volume reached 53.9 million shares, roughly 1.96 times the one-month average, and the stock's one-month return stands at 35.39%.

CleanSpark Inc.'s debut junk-bond offering for a data center tied to Meta Platforms Inc. drew orders of about $10 billion, more than four times the deal's size, according to people familiar with the matter. The five-year notes were set at almost $2.28 billion and launched at 98.5 cents on the dollar to yield 8.25%, roughly 1.75 percentage points above the average for BB rated firms tracked by Bloomberg. The fundraising, led by Morgan Stanley, will help finance construction of a data center in Sandersville, Georgia, that has been fully leased to Anviran LLC, a Meta subsidiary, under a $6.6 billion, 20-year contract. The facility is expected to begin operations in the fourth quarter of 2027, with Meta guaranteeing rent and operating expenses. Data center developers have now sold more than $3 billion of high-yield bonds so far this year, most backed by long-term leases with hyperscalers including Oracle Corp. and Amazon.com Inc.

Palantir Technologies' commercial revenue surged 110% to $945 million in the second quarter of 2026, more than doubling the $451 million recorded a year earlier. The commercial segment added $494 million year over year, expanding by more than its entire year-earlier base, while government revenue rose 79% to $990 million from $553 million. Combined, the two businesses generated $1.94 billion in second-quarter 2026 revenue, up from roughly $1 billion a year earlier, with commercial operations contributing more than half of the combined year-over-year increase and narrowing the gap with government revenue to just $45 million. Among peers, C3.ai reported fiscal fourth-quarter 2026 revenue of $51.6 million, down substantially year over year, and forecast fiscal 2027 revenue of $210-$240 million, while Datadog's second-quarter 2026 revenue rose 36% to $1.12 billion, with customers contributing at least $100,000 in ARR up 23% to roughly 4,720 and free cash flow of $279 million. Palantir shares have gained 37% over the past three months against 19% industry growth, and the stock trades at a forward price-to-sales ratio of 39.96X versus an industry average of 4.2X, carrying a Value Score of F and a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy).

Samsara now expects a thinner free cash flow margin and a fatter operating margin for fiscal 2027, as the company pays upfront for the IoT hardware that carries its AI subscriptions. The CFO said Samsara buys the devices upfront while revenue comes back ratably over the customer contract, and the company cited the IoT devices that faster growth needs, inventory it is prebuying as a buffer, and higher supply chain costs in the second half of fiscal 2027. Free cash flow margin is guided about 100 basis points below fiscal 2026, which on the $2.04 billion of revenue guided for fiscal 2027 works out to roughly $20 million, while the non-GAAP operating margin guide rose to 21% from 20%. More than 20% of Samsara's net new contract value came from emerging products in each of the last three quarters, and deals with a top-five U.S. city included more than $2 million of emerging products in fiscal Q2 2027. Samsara crossed $2.1 billion in annual recurring revenue in fiscal Q2 2027, up 30% over the past year, and raised its fiscal 2027 revenue, growth, operating margin and earnings guides at one release.

Nebius Group shares jumped nearly 9% in Thursday premarket trading after the AI cloud provider reportedly raised prices across several compute services, a signal that demand for scarce GPU capacity remains strong. According to a customer communication circulated online, Nebius plans to increase prices for several on-demand GPU offerings beginning October 1, covering Nvidia's H100, H200, B200 and B300 accelerators. The reported increases extend beyond GPUs: prices for AMD EPYC Genoa CPU compute are expected to rise 25% to $0.015 per vCPU-hour from $0.012, while memory pricing tied to Genoa systems is reportedly increasing about 41% to $0.0045 per GiB-hour from $0.0032. Nebius has not publicly confirmed the pricing changes and did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The market reaction spread beyond Nebius, with IREN shares rising about 5.1% in premarket trading and CoreWeave gaining roughly 6.1%, suggesting investors read the reported increases as a positive signal for the wider neocloud industry.

Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff unveiled AIforce, an AI connectivity layer that lets employees access Salesforce data and run complex workflows inside third-party AI tools such as Anthropic's Claude and Slack, at Dreamforce 2026, using the stage to directly criticize Microsoft. AIforce launched with three integrations: Claudeforce, built in partnership with Anthropic, brings Salesforce data directly into Claude; Slackforce connects that same data to conversations in Slack; and AgentforceCoworker operates inside Salesforce's own Lightning interface. Benioff framed AIforce as the answer to what he calls the "Fantasyland" problem, arguing that rival AI tools like Microsoft's Copilot lack the reliable business data layer required to safely power a business, extending a public rivalry that dates to Dreamforce 2024, when he compared Copilot to "Clippy." Salesforce generated $11.35 billion in revenue during its most recent quarter, beating Wall Street's expectations on both earnings and revenue, and CRM stock has rallied about 34% over the past month after falling as much as 37% earlier in 2026, closing at $255.65 on Sept. 15. On the same day as the Dreamforce announcement, Salesforce suffered a global service disruption that locked some customers out of their systems, and investors are watching Agentforce and Data 360 adoption numbers in the next quarterly report, where combined annual recurring revenue already exceeds $2.9 billion, more than 200% growth from a year ago.

BILL Holdings reported fourth-quarter fiscal 2026 non-GAAP net income of 84 cents per share, beating the Zacks Consensus Estimate of 69 cents and rising 58.5% from a year ago, on revenues of $436.2 million that grew 13.8% year over year and topped estimates by 1.5%. Total payment volume reached $98 billion, up 14% year over year, while core revenues, comprising subscription and transaction fees, rose 16% to $400.5 million. Non-GAAP operating income increased to $101.6 million from $56.4 million, lifting the non-GAAP operating margin to 23%, up 860 basis points year over year. The company repurchased approximately 8.4 million shares during the quarter for about $300 million, leaving $400 million under its $1 billion share repurchase authorization. For fiscal 2027, management forecasts total revenues of $1.81-$1.86 billion, core revenues of $1.67-$1.72 billion and non-GAAP net income per share of $3.56-$3.79.

CleanSpark has signed a 20-year, $6.6 billion triple-net lease for its Sandersville, Georgia, site, a deal the company expects to generate $330 million in annual revenue. Chairman and CEO Matt Schultz said the site includes a fully energized 250-megawatt substation, that CleanSpark secured an additional 122 acres with community support, and that the tenant received short-term exclusivity for up to 885 additional megawatts in Texas, with the first data hall targeted for delivery in December 2027. The announcement came during an H.C. Wainwright panel where mining and AI infrastructure executives described a broad pivot from bitcoin operations toward AI colocation, cloud services and GPU-as-a-service. Core Scientific's Russell Cann said direct-liquid-cooled construction costs have climbed from roughly $4.5 million per megawatt for early projects to about $10 million to $10.5 million per megawatt for facilities turned on this year and $12 million to $13 million per megawatt for projects expected to start operating in 2027. Cann also said Core Scientific recently announced a roughly 500-megawatt agreement with AMD, with AMD holding rights to the next 2,000 megawatts across sites in Hunt County and Pecos, Texas, and Muskogee, Oklahoma, under a 15-year triple-net lease at $125 per megawatt or a modified gross structure at $145 per megawatt. Executives pushed back on AI bubble concerns, with Cann noting roughly 5 gigawatts of rack space is delivered annually against approximately 15 gigawatts of annual chip demand, while cautioning that many power requests may be duplicative or unsupported by actual transmission, substations or fuel supply.

Cloudflare said more than 50% of the traffic flowing across its network was nonhuman in the second quarter of 2026, reflecting rapid growth in AI agents and machine-to-machine traffic. The company ended the quarter with more than 7.4 million developers on its Workers platform, adding nearly two million in the quarter alone, and management said Workers remains one of the fastest-growing parts of its business. Cloudflare also introduced Monetization Gateway, Wallets and cloudflare.pay during the quarter to support transactions between AI agents, businesses and content providers. Second-quarter revenues increased 36% year over year, while dollar-based net retention reached 120%, and management said its total addressable market has expanded to more than $300 billion from $30 billion at the time of its IPO. The Zacks Consensus Estimate points to Cloudflare revenue growth of 32.5% in 2026 and 28.6% in 2027, with 2026 earnings estimated at $1.26 per share, up 35.5% from the prior year.

Former United Kingdom Prime Minister Liz Truss has joined the Board of Directors of Roundtable, the Nasdaq-listed media operating system company, and will lead the formation of a European Press Coalition. Roundtable CEO James Heckman announced the appointment, saying Truss will focus on leveraging the company's media operating system to help high-quality journalism self-support. Truss served 14 years in British public life as Prime Minister, Parliamentarian, Foreign Secretary, International Trade Secretary and Chief Secretary to the Treasury. Roundtable said it has assembled an audience exceeding 100 million and a $100 million marketplace shared by dozens of premium media brands and hundreds of professional journalists, with Truss positioned to help curate and expand journalism within that ecosystem. The company describes itself as the world's only AI and DeFi-powered Enterprise Media Operating System, integrating distribution, publishing, monetization, community, syndication and DeFi payment operations.

UiPath has been rated Zacks Rank #2 (Buy), with the consensus estimate for the current quarter rising 15.2% over the last 30 days to $0.18 per share, a year-over-year change of +12.5%. For the current fiscal year, the consensus earnings estimate of $0.79 points to a change of +9.7% from the prior year and has moved +19.1% over the past 30 days, while the next fiscal year's estimate of $0.91 indicates a change of +14.1% and has changed +0.4% over the past month. The consensus sales estimate of $442.63 million for the current quarter points to a year-over-year change of +7.7%, with the $1.79 billion and $1.94 billion estimates for the current and next fiscal years indicating changes of +11.1% and +8.1%, respectively. In the last reported quarter, UiPath reported revenues of $410.26 million, a year-over-year change of +13.4%, and EPS of $0.15, matching the year-ago figure, with a revenue surprise of +3.19% against the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $397.59 million and an EPS surprise of 0%. The stock has returned -13.6% over the past month versus the Zacks S&P 500 composite's -1.3% change, while the Zacks Internet - Software industry has gained 7.8% over this period, and UiPath carries a Zacks Value Style Score of C.

Amazia announced that it will record a 13 million yen gain on the sale of investment securities as an extraordinary profit, following the partial sale of shares in its investee Skyfall in connection with Skyfall's initial public offering. The announcement served as a catalyst for the stock, and Amazia's share price showed a sharp move in morning trading. The announcement was made on September 17, the previous day. The current price is 323 yen, up 8 yen from the previous day's close.

London stocks closed higher on Thursday, September 17, with the FTSE 100 ending at 10,816.14 points, up 127.67 points, or 1.19%, hitting its highest level in more than a week. The gain came after the Bank of England voted 6 to 3 to keep interest rates at 3.75%, in line with market expectations, and announced it would suspend sales of UK government bonds for six months and halt long-dated bond sales altogether. The move followed a global bond selloff just days earlier that pushed the UK's 30-year borrowing cost to 5.96%, its highest since 1998. BoE Governor Andrew Bailey warned that prolonged conflict in the Middle East could make tighter monetary policy necessary. Data from LSEG showed investors had already priced in at least a 0.25% rate hike from the BoE this year. Rate-sensitive bank shares rose 1.6%, with HSBC and Standard Chartered leading the market with gains of 2% and 2.2% respectively. AstraZeneca rose about 2.4% after Chinese authorities said they would invest nearly 200 million yuan, or 29.81 million dollars, to upgrade its manufacturing base and supply chain in the city of Wuxi. Bytes Technology surged 12% after stronger-than-expected first-half results and an upgrade to its full-year gross profit growth forecast.

Nebius Group has raised prices for its Nvidia GPU and AMD CPU cloud services, citing surging enterprise interest in large-scale AI training and inference workloads. The higher rates apply to both Nvidia GPU instances and AMD CPU based compute bundles across the company's AI focused cloud offerings, with the price change taking effect on October 1. The company said the move reflects strong AI workloads filling its infrastructure and tight supply of high end chips such as Nvidia H100 and B300, and that steeper rates on GPUs and AMD EPYC Genoa CPUs help align customer bills with the cost of scarce compute capacity and large data center buildouts. Nebius Group builds full stack infrastructure for AI developers and enterprises across the US, the UK, and other markets, so the pricing directly shapes what customers pay to train and run models at scale. Investors will watch upcoming quarterly updates for the AI cloud revenue mix and Palantir related usage, since stable or growing GPU utilization at the new rates would show the higher pricing is being absorbed rather than pushing workloads to rival providers.

Paradium.AI has signed a 10-year strategic platform agreement with RTB Digital, which operates as Roundtable, under which Roundtable will provide technology, monetization and operating services supporting Paradium.AI's portfolio of media brands while Paradium.AI retains ownership of its brands, domains, intellectual property and audiences. In a separate private transaction, Roundtable agreed to acquire Paradium.AI common stock from Simplify Inventions, Paradium.AI's largest shareholder, at $3.80 per share, leaving Roundtable with approximately 49.5% of Paradium.AI's outstanding common stock and Simplify with approximately 23.1%. That equity transaction will not involve the issuance of new Paradium.AI shares or result in proceeds to Paradium.AI, and Paradium.AI is not a party to it. Under the platform agreement, Roundtable will assume responsibility for a substantial amount of annual operating functions and costs currently borne by Paradium.AI, including certain product, engineering and monetization functions, will receive a percentage of revenue related to Paradium.AI's media brands hosted on Roundtable's platform, and will receive a worldwide, perpetual license to certain Paradium.AI technology assets, with Paradium.AI retaining ownership of the underlying intellectual property and receiving shares of Roundtable common stock subject to closing price conditions including Nasdaq minimum pricing requirements. The transactions remain subject to conditions precedent, including funding requirements to be satisfied by Roundtable, and are scheduled to close prior to the end of Q4 2026, with no assurance as to when the remaining conditions will be satisfied or the transactions completed.

Commvault Systems has enabled its managed service provider partners to deliver FedRAMP High Authorized Commvault Cloud for Government services to U.S. federal agencies and defense contractors, broadening the company's public sector reach. The move lands on a stock with a 7 day share price return of 10.29% and a 90 day share price gain of 11.67%, though its 1 year total shareholder return is down 23.35% while the 3 year total shareholder return is up 111.68%. The most followed valuation narrative puts fair value at $161.15 against a last close of $145.21, implying roughly 10% upside, and rests on analyst expectations of about 10.6% annual revenue growth, profit margins rising toward 9.8%, and an 8.85% discount rate. That story leans on recurring SaaS economics, including 63% SaaS ARR growth, a 45% increase in multi-product customers, and 125% SaaS net dollar retention. A contrasting read notes the stock trades at a P/E of 88.1x versus 30.5x for the wider US Software group and a fair ratio of 38.7x, signaling valuation risk if sentiment cools.

Intapp shares perked up 4% during early post-market trading on Thursday after the company revealed a new partnership with OpenAI. Under the deal, Celeste, Intapp's expert AI coworker, is now a plug-in for ChatGPT Enterprise, bringing a legal firm's proprietary context and methods into the enterprise chatbot. Intapp provides software for highly regulated industries such as law, accounting, and investment banking. The Celeste plug-in for ChatGPT Enterprise is available to eligible Intapp Celeste clients starting today. Thad Jampol, co-founder and chief product officer at Intapp, said the law is the same for every firm, but what a firm knows about its clients, methods, matters, and judgment is its real franchise. Jason Boehmig, OpenAI's general manager of the legal industry, said building alongside Intapp turns that expertise into AI lawyers can use every day.

Intapp announced its Celeste plug-in for ChatGPT Enterprise, bringing its expert AI coworker into the platform lawyers already use. The plug-in lets lawyers working in ChatGPT Enterprise draw on Celeste to capture work as it happens, check it against a firm's outside counsel guidelines, and bill it accurately, as well as source new opportunities and prepare for client meetings on work the firm has already cleared for conflicts. Access is governed by the firm's ethical walls, confidentiality obligations, and need-to-know rules, so a lawyer reaches only what the firm has entitled them to reach. The plug-in is available to eligible Intapp Celeste clients beginning today. Intapp Co-founder and Chief Product Officer Thad Jampol said being available in ChatGPT Enterprise means firms now run inside the models lawyers are already using, while OpenAI Legal Industry General Manager Jason Boehmig said building alongside Intapp turns each firm's expertise into AI lawyers can use every day.

Oracle expanded its fiscal-2026 restructuring plan to roughly $2.8 billion as the company pours more capital into AI infrastructure, Reuters reported. The shares rallied about 5.4% to $150.90 Thursday morning, based on the latest market snapshot, versus the earlier $148.83 quote. That $2.8 billion restructuring bill works out to roughly 14.5% of Oracle's latest $19.35 billion in quarterly revenue and covers severance, contract exits and other restructuring costs, while free cash flow is running at approximately negative $5.4 billion. Remaining performance obligations have climbed to $664 billion after Oracle signed more than $30 billion of additional AI-cloud contracts, with roughly half of that backlog expected to turn into revenue within 36 months. Management says customer prepayments and customer-supplied chips can soften the capital burden, but the real test is execution.

Microsoft pushed another high-security financial workload deeper into Azure Thursday with a managed payment-security service built for banks and payment processors, sending the shares up approximately 1.6% to $498.17. The offering, Azure Payment HSM v2, combines Marvell's LiquidSecurity hardware with Utimaco's Atalla payment module, giving financial institutions a cloud-based way to protect payment keys, encryption and transaction security without giving up the controls demanded by regulated environments. The public preview is available in West US and Western Europe, and Microsoft did not disclose pricing, customer contracts or expected revenue, so the near-term financial impact remains difficult to quantify. The bigger story is where Microsoft keeps pushing Azure: Microsoft Cloud generated $59.3 billion, or roughly 65.9% of the company's latest quarterly revenue, and payment security opens another sticky workload where compliance requirements can make switching painful. The preview alone will not move Microsoft's financial needle, but successful production adoption could deepen Azure's grip on highly regulated customers and create another layer of recurring cloud spending.

Securitize shares surged Thursday after federal regulators greenlit the issuing of tokenized stocks on some trading platforms in the U.S. The tokenization name was last up 14%, having peaked at a 24% gain. The Securities and Exchange Commission earlier in the day announced a temporary path for the limited trading of tokenized publicly traded U.S. stocks; the order, though not a formal regulation change, will remain in force for five years. SEC Chair Paul Atkins said the Innovation Exemption is designed to resolve challenges that have prevented responsible innovation from taking root in the United States while providing investor protections and market integrity standards. Securitize became the first major tokenization firm to go public in the U.S. in early July and holds roughly 9% of the tokenized market by assets under management, according to Needham Securities. The combined market value of tokenized assets has soared to $38.51 billion as of Thursday afternoon, up more than 70% over the past year, according to data provider RWA.xyz.

Oracle shares trade at $147.17 even after a fiscal Q1 2027 earnings report that saw revenue hit $19.345 billion, up 29.6% year over year, non-GAAP EPS of $1.92 against a $1.74 estimate, and cloud infrastructure growth of 121%. Remaining performance obligations swelled to $664 billion, with more than $30 billion in new AI contracts booked in the quarter alone, yet the stock has fallen 8.95% over the past week as the market focuses on negative $5.396 billion quarterly free cash flow and a $28.499 billion capex bill. 24/7 Wall St. maintains a buy rating and a $214.69 price target, implying roughly 50% upside, with 90% confidence, citing a forward P/E of 17 that is cheaper than Microsoft at 26 and Alphabet at 22. The bear case centers on FY26 free cash flow of negative $23.686 billion, interest expense up 55% to $1.4 billion, and full-year FY27 capex guidance of $90 to $95 billion, which could force another equity raise beyond the completed $20 billion ATM program. Half of the $664 billion RPO is expected to convert to revenue over the next 36 months, and management guided full fiscal 2027 revenue to at least $90 billion with non-GAAP EPS of $8.10.

Salesforce has moved its Claudeforce partnership with Anthropic into an open beta on all paid plans, pushing enterprise CRM data into Claude's native interface. The release centers on a plugin that bridges Salesforce's data stores and Claude's reasoning engine, arriving with 37 prebuilt sales skills covering everything from meeting preparation to pipeline reviews. The beta is currently accessible via the Salesforce AppExchange and the Claude Enterprise Marketplace. Under the mutual adoption model, Salesforce has named Claude its preferred AI model while Anthropic has designated Salesforce its preferred CRM, with the plugin running on the AIforce harness and integrating with Headless 360, Data 360, Tableau, and Slack, where Claude now serves as the default model for Slack AI, Slackbot, and Slack Code. Salesforce reports its employees have realized 8.1 million hours of annualized productivity gains using Slackbot, a figure that has doubled quarter-over-quarter. Deployment requires a one-time connection, after which every seller gains access immediately, with no per-user configuration or new permissions model.

Datadog's enterprise new logo annualized bookings more than doubled year over year in the second quarter of 2026, with customers generating $100,000 or more in annual recurring revenue climbing to about 4,720, a 23% increase from roughly 3,850 a year prior, while total customer count rose to approximately 33,400 from 31,400. Over 750 AI-native customers now rely on Datadog, and all 10 of the largest AI companies are counted among its customers, with MCP tool calls quadrupling quarter over quarter. The momentum builds on a quarter in which revenues grew 36% year over year to $1.12 billion, non-GAAP operating margin reached 23% from 20%, free cash flow rose to $279 million from $165 million, and remaining performance obligations reached $3.47 billion, up 43%. Third-quarter revenue guidance of $1.135 billion to $1.145 billion and a full-year range of $4.45 billion to $4.47 billion embed a previously flagged usage reduction from its single largest customer, while full-year non-GAAP operating income guidance of $1.01 billion to $1.03 billion points to continued margin discipline against elevated GAAP operating expense growth tied partly to the Adaptive ML acquisition. Rivals Dynatrace and Elastic are reporting comparable enterprise expansion, with Dynatrace posting record new-logo annual recurring revenue growth of more than 160% and total ARR of $2.14 billion, up 17%, and Elastic growing its $100,000-plus ACV customer cohort past 1,800 accounts alongside 27% remaining performance obligation growth. Datadog shares have surged 74.7% year to date, and the Zacks Consensus Estimate for 2026 earnings stands at $2.52 per share.

Generac struck a deal with Amazon to supply backup power generators for its data centers, with initial deliveries expected to total $2.4 billion between 2027 and 2028, and also granted Amazon the right to buy up to $340 million worth of its stock. Generac shares soared 19% on the news, while Amazon's stock moved 1.3% higher. Fluence Energy shares tumbled 14% after the battery storage maker cut its full-year guidance, now expecting $2.4 billion in revenue for 2026 versus its prior guidance of $2.9 billion to $3.1 billion, and anticipating a loss of $200 million before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, more than its previous guidance range of $30 million loss to $10 million EBITDA. Workday rose 5% after CNBC's David Faber reported that efforts to gain financing for a bid to take the cloud-based human resources software platform private are continuing, citing unidentified sources. Tower Semiconductor rose almost 9% after agreeing with privately-held New Photonics to a high-volume shipment of laser-integrated optical engines designed to meet growing demand for high-bandwidth, energy-efficient optical interconnects in AI infrastructure, and Vital Farms climbed 9% after Axios said the Austin, Texas-based pasture-raised egg and butter producer is exploring strategic alternatives, including privatization.

Oracle stock rose 6% at midday as reports emerged that OpenAI has recently been in talks to raise capital at a $1.2 trillion valuation. The move underscores how closely Oracle's fortunes are tied to OpenAI, its key AI partner. Last September, Oracle signed a $300 billion deal to provide computing power for OpenAI, a transformative agreement that elevated Oracle to a leading hyperscaler but also raised concerns that it had overstretched itself building expensive AI infrastructure for a customer many believed could face funding difficulties. Those fears had weighed on Oracle's debt, pushing credit default swap spreads higher, and the market was left unimpressed by recent news that OpenAI would push back its initial public offering from 2026 to at least 2027. If the funding speculation proves credible, it would be excellent news for Oracle and help de-risk its AI infrastructure build-out plans.

Roundtable, trading on Nasdaq as RTB, announced a 10-year, $1 billion agreement with The Arena Group, now known as Paradium.AI and trading on the NYSE as PAAI, to migrate, operate and monetize Arena's premium media portfolio on Roundtable's AI and DeFi-powered MediaOS. Following deal closure, Roundtable forecasts a $100 million annualized revenue and an EBITDA-positive run rate on a stand-alone basis, with 100 million monthly consumers. Two dozen brands and nearly 100 million consumers will migrate to Roundtable's MediaOS, including TheStreet, Parade, Men's Journal, Athlon Sports, Autoblog and Powder, along with hundreds of professional journalists. The agreements are subject to Roundtable's minority investment in PAAI, $89 million in cash and stock for approximately 49% of PAAI, in a private transaction, and other conditions precedent, which include funding requirements to complete the transactions in the fourth quarter. The partnership reunites PAAI CEO Paul Edmondson with RTB founders James Heckman and Bill Sornsin, who were last teamed in 2020.

Salesforce co-founder and CEO Marc Benioff used his keynote at the annual Dreamforce software festival to warn that the AI industry must not repeat the failures of social media, saying "we cannot let AI be social media 2.0." Speaking to Yahoo Finance's Opening Bid from Dreamforce in San Francisco, Benioff said companies and executives must take absolute responsibility for the applications and technology they build, arguing there needs to be an ethical base in how the industry operates. He noted that Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman both attended Dreamforce and addressed their concerns, while figures including venture capitalist Bill Gurley and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg have weighed in on safeguarding people in an increasingly AI agent future. Benioff, who also owns Time Magazine, said businesses must be responsible for their actions and that "the only people who are going to prevent [bad things] from happening are the people who are building that code." Salesforce used the event to announce several AI products, including AIforce and a tie-up with Nvidia on a new model dubbed Koa, which Stifel analyst J. Parker Lane said underscores the open approach the company is taking on the model and UI layers as it leans on its data and context layers as its core moat in the Agentic Era.

Michael Saylor, Chairman of MicroStrategy, said banks will expand Bitcoin custody and lending without new legislation from Congress, arguing the SEC and CFTC can advance crypto rules under existing law while the CLARITY Act stalls. Saylor's case rests on Bitcoin's settled status as a CFTC-regulated commodity with SEC-approved spot ETFs, plus a series of interpretive letters the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency has issued since March 2025 confirming national banks may custody crypto assets and execute trades at customer direction. Deutsche Bank announced this week that it plans to launch regulated custody for Bitcoin, Ethereum and select stablecoins for institutional and corporate clients by the end of 2026, and that launch is awaiting sign-off from BaFin, Germany's financial regulator, under the European Union's Markets in Crypto-Assets regulation, whose transition period ended on July 1. The bank, which reported $2.217 trillion in assets under management as of June 30, holds a German crypto-custody authorization but still needs BaFin's approval for the specific service it announced, and that custody approval is the first piece any bank needs before it can lend against Bitcoin at all. Saylor's argument runs thin in one respect: OCC interpretive letters are guidance rather than statute and can be revoked by a future administration or a court challenge without a vote in Congress, whereas the CLARITY Act would lock Bitcoin's commodity status and banks' lending authority into law. Bitcoin-backed lending would let large holders borrow at bank rates instead of triggering a taxable sale, but the same structure works in reverse when prices fall, as happened in 2022 when Celsius, BlockFi and Voyager collapsed under forced selling, and the shift remains early since Deutsche Bank has not launched custody yet, let alone lending.