This Week in Tech (Week Ending May 8, 2026)
Hey folks!
Happy Friday! š Tech news below!
š Macro (Economic) and Trends
On Wed, oil fell to around $98 a barrel, while U.S. stock futures gained after reports that the White House believed it was close to reaching a framework agreement with Iran to end the war.
š¤ÆThe United States crossed a symbolic threshold: The national debt is now larger than its GDP.
š¬ Micro (Tech Companies)
šššEarnings: Despite economic uncertainty tied to the Iran war, stubborn inflation and souring consumer sentiment, this is apparently āone of the best earnings seasons in 20 years.ā All 11 top-level sectors of the S&P 500 ā including technology, healthcare and industrials ā are expected to show year-over-year earnings growth for the first time in four years. A few highlights:
Palantir reported revenue grew 85% to more than $1.6 billion in its March quarterāa 15% uptick from last quarterāand raised its full-year projection to 71% growth, from the 60% it issued a few months ago.
ServiceNow executives said they expect the companyās subscription revenue will rise to a range between $30 billion and $32 billion by 2030, or about double the roughly $15.7 billion in subscription revenue the software company has projected for this fiscal year.
Pinterestās revenue growth accelerated to 18% in the first quarter, lifting its topline to $854.9 million.
Uber reported steady growth in the first quarter, with gross bookingsāthe dollar value of all transactions on the serviceārising 25%, although only 21% on a constant currency basis.
Snapās revenue growth accelerated to 12% in the first quarter, lifted by strong growth in the social media firmās small subscriptions business.
DoorDash reported 33% growth in revenue, to $4 billion, a slowdown from the fourth quarter but still several percentage points higher than the growth rate the food-delivery firm had reported for most of last year.
Amazon is opening up its global logistics network to all businesses. The new service, called Amazon Supply Chain Services, pits the e-commerce giant directly against UPS and FedEx.
š¬š„RIP Spirit Airlines: So what happened? Spirit didnāt sufficiently hedge its jet fuel costs; Ongoing issues with Pratt & Whitney engines caused Spirit to ground a bunch of planes, creating significant losses; Spirit bailed on a merger agreement with Frontier in order to pursue the JetBlue tie-up which was then denied by the Justice Dept.
Layoffs: Coinbase is laying off 14% of staff
š¤AI News
The Trump administration is weighing the creation of a working group for government officials and industry leaders to discuss AI oversight procedures. Crucially, that may include a formal government review process for new A.I. models. Driving much of the shift is Mythos, Anthropicās next-generation A.I. model, whose ability to rapidly find cybersecurity vulnerabilities has worried government and corporate leaders.
Meta Platforms is building a consumer version of the AI agent OpenClaw and a new agentic shopping tool, as CEO Mark Zuckerberg pushes for products to deliver returns on the companyās huge artificial intelligence investments. Meta is training the OpenClaw-inspired agent, internally called āHatch,ā with the goal of internal testing by the end of June.
Meta will use AI to analyze height and bone structure to identify if users are underage. But apparently some kids are bypassing age verification checks with fake mustaches š„ø
OpenAI has launched a self-serve advertising platform, marking a significant step in its goal of generating $2.5 billion in ad revenue this year and $100 billion by 2030.
OpenAI released GPT-5.5 Instant, a new default model for ChatGPT: The company said the model reduces hallucination in sensitive areas such as law, medicine, and finance, while maintaining the low latency of its predecessor.
š¤š©ŗA Character.AI chatbot presented itself as a licensed psychiatrist during a state investigation, and also fabricated a serial number for its state medical license. And now Pennsylvania is suing them.
Anthropic and OpenAI are both launching joint ventures for enterprise AI services: Both Anthropic and OpenAI have partnered with asset managers to more aggressively market their enterprise AI products.
In a Harvard study, AI offered more accurate emergency room diagnoses than two human doctors: A new study examines how large language models perform in a variety of medical scenarios.
š¤š āāļøThe Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences ā the group behind the Academy Awards ā updated its rules last week to specify that āAI is not welcome at the Oscarsā.
AI is helping turn real doctors into the unwitting stars of deepfake videos that hawk questionable products or spread misinformation,
š¤ Select M&A, Fundraises, IPO, Partnerships
M&A
š¤Gamestop $55.5bn bid for eBay is confusing everyone.
SAP plans to buy German AI startup Prior Labs and invest heavily in it.
Meta Platforms has acquired Assured Robotics Intelligence, a startup developing AI models for humanoid robots.
Cisco announced its intent to acquire Israeli cybersecurity startup Astrix.
Fundraising
Sierra, a three-year-old startup that makes agents for managing client relationships, is raising $950 million in a funding round valuing the AI customer service startup at over $15 billion including the investment.
Chinaās Moonshot AI raises $2B at $20B valuation as demand for open-source AI skyrocket.
Partnerships
Anthropic struck a deal for compute capacity from Elon Muskās SpaceX, a move that could help it manage surging AI demand. The unlikely partnership between two artificial intelligence rivals underscores Anthropicās growing need for computing firepower amid concerns that itās running out of this vital resource
ā±ļø Gold Panning - For those who reached the bottom
Met Gala 2026: and all the fashion looks
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