This Week in Tech (Week Ending Oct 31, 2025)
TL;DR - 📈Nvidia; 📣Earnings week for Meta, Microsoft, Google
Hey folks!
Happy Halloween! 🎃👻🍭Tech news below.
TL;DR -
📈Nvidia had a huge week: Not only did it hit a major milestone - becoming the first company to hit $5tn in market value - they also unveiled a deal with Uber to partner on production of thousands of vehicles that can run as robotaxis on Uber’s service, and also announced that it would invest $1 billion in Nokia, with Nokia agreeing to adopt Nvidia’s new telecommunications hardware.
Microsoft will get a 27% stake in OpenAI valued at $135 billion and will retain the rights to use the startup’s intellectual property through 2032.
Big earnings week for the markets: with Meta Platforms reporting a 26% increase in its third-quarter revenue that exceeded its own forecasts for the period; Microsoft reporting revenue grew 18% to $77.7 billion in the past quarter;
Google’s revenue from renting out cloud servers rose 34% in Q3 YOY, and Google Cloud’s operating profit rose 84% YOY.
🌎 Macro (Economic) and Trends
🫧 Is this an AI boom or bubble? The S&P 500 has notched more than 30 record highs this year. Seven tech companies now account for more than a third of the value of the S&P 500 and trade at prices 70 times higher than their earnings, on average. The NYT offers both sides of the argument here.
📉The Federal Reserve cut rates by a quarter point - down to its lowest level in 3 years.
🇦🇷In Argentina, market-friendly President Javier Milei won big this past weekend when Milei’s party won almost 41% of the national vote, more than doubling its representation in Congress. That means his party and allies secured at least one-third of the seats in both chambers—the critical threshold that allows Milei to preserve his veto power and defend his sweeping decrees.
🇨🇳China has passed a new law requiring influencers to hold a degree in the topics they discuss in their content in order to prevent misinformation.
🇨🇴The U.S. blew up four boats, killing 14 people, off the coast of Colombia, making this instance the deadliest day so far in the Pentagon’s escalating campaign against alleged drug-runners
🌀 Hurricane Melissa hit Jamaica as a Category 5 storm on Tuesday, potentially the strongest to ever hit the country. Local officials issued dire warnings but many residents refused to evacuate. The scale of the damage is likely to be difficult to quickly ascertain because of power and communications outages. Melissa then hit Cuba on Wednesday as a Category 3 storm.
💰Obamacare healthcare prices next year will cost much more due to the expiration of generous subsidies at the end of the year.
🌎Bill Gates is changing his view on climate change: Gates is saying that we shouldn’t focus as much on near-term emissions goals. Instead, we should focus on longer term policies: “Emissions projections have gone down, and with the right policies and investments, innovation will allow us to drive emissions down much further.”
🔬 Micro (Tech Companies)
🍎Apple says US passport digital IDs are coming to Wallet ‘soon’.
📌Pinterest is testing an AI-driven collage to help users create outfits from saved Pins and personalized boards curated with AI.
Nvidia is bringing the company’s first-ever developers conference to DC, signaling how central Washington has become to the chip giant’s ambitions. Why it matters: The annual Nvidia GTC (GPU Technology Conference) in San Jose is known as the “Super Bowl of AI.” The new Washington edition showcases Nvidia’s deepening ties with the federal government.
📣Earnings
Meta Platforms reported a 26% increase in its third-quarter revenue that exceeded its own forecasts for the period. But the company also saw a 32% increase in its costs as it spent heavily to recruit superstar artificial intelligence researchers and operate its growing fleet of data centers, causing shares to sink 9% in after hours trading.
Microsoft revenue grew 18% to $77.7 billion in the three months ending in September, the same rate of growth as the June quarter.
Google’s revenue from renting out cloud servers rose 34% in Q3 YOY. The Google Cloud growth in the third quarter was more than 2 percentage points higher than the growth it experienced in Q2 and the unit’s operating profit rose a remarkable 84% to $3.6 billion compared to the same period a year earlier. Overall, Alphabet revenue rose 16% in the September quarter, 2 percentage points higher than its growth in the prior two quarters.
🧶Etsy replaced its CEO - CEO Josh Silverman will become the executive chairman of the online marketplace’s board, as the company tries to revamp itself amid continually declining sales. He will be replaced by Kruti Patel Goyal, a longtime Etsy executive who was previously its president and chief growth officer. Prior to that, she was the CEO of secondhand and resale app Depop, which Etsy also owns.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang revealed that Nvidia has received more than $500 billion in orders through 2026, reflecting demand for its latest chips, and then it became the first company to hit $5tn in market value.
📺Disney last Thursday warned customers that its networks, including ESPN, ABC and its entertainment channels, may be dropped from YouTube TV if the two parties cannot reach a new distribution agreement ahead of their current deal expiring this week.
Microsoft Azure suffered an outage, affecting 365, Xbox, Minecraft, and others:
Better late than never I guess: CNN unveiled its new subscription streaming service, All Access, three years after the chaotic collapse of CNN+.
🕵️♀️Yet another case of corporate espionage: After Deel and Rippling’s drama this past summer, we’re seeing yet another case of corporate espionage, this time between 401(k) management companies, Human Interest and Guideline. If you read the article, it’s giving more Cousin Greg energy than Mission: Impossible.
✂️Layoffs: Amazon plans to cut tens of thousands of corporate jobs, roughly 10% of its white-collar workforce, as it seeks to conserve cash. Chegg, the online education firm, is laying off 388 employees—around 45% of its workforce—due to the “new realities of AI”. Not exactly a layoff but YouTube announced a ‘voluntary exit program’ for US staff.
🌊Trend in layoffs - are we hitting a tipping point? The wave of major companies announcing large-scale layoffs is a warning that the U.S. labor market could be starting to tip over. AI advances hold the promise of doing more with less. At the same time: The high-profile layoffs could turn out to be isolated. Much larger job reductions were announced in late 2022 and 2023, and the unemployment rate rose by half a percentage point or so before leveling off.
Plus:
🤖 AI News
OpenAI is developing artificial intelligence to allow people to generate music using text and audio prompts
OpenAI has completed its recapitalization, splitting the AI lab into a for-profit corporation nested inside a non-profit foundation.
Good: Character AI is ending its chatbot experience for kids
🤝 Select M&A, Fundraises, IPO, Partnerships
M&A
SambaNova Systems, an artificial intelligence chip startup, is exploring a sale after it was unable to complete a fundraising round. The company, last valued at $5 billion in 2021, has faced sales growth challenges against competitors like Nvidia.
Forge Global, a publicly traded platform for trading stakes in privately held startups, is exploring a sale.
Skyworks Solutions, which supplies radio frequency chips to Apple and other smartphone makers, is acquiring its main rival Qorvo for $10.6 billion in a combination of cash and stock.
Morgan Stanley has agreed to acquire EquityZen, a trading platform for buying and selling stakes in private companies.
Bending Spoons, one of Europe’s largest mobile app developers, has agreed to buy AOL from Yahoo, which is backed by private equity giant Apollo.
Figma acquired AI-powered media generation company Weavy. Figma said that Weavy will exist as a stand-alone product for now and that, in the future, it will be integrated with the Figma Weave brand, along with the rest of the Figma platform.
Fundraising
Mercor 5x’d its valuation to $10bn with its $350mill series C.
Whatnot announced a $225 million fundraising Tuesday at a valuation of $11.5 billion, more than double the level at which it last raised.
Partnerships
⭐️Microsoft will get a 27% stake in OpenAI valued at $135 billion and will retain the rights to use the startup’s intellectual property through 2032.
Adobe and Google are expanding their partnership so that Adobe customers will be able to use Google’s latest AI models to power applications like Photoshop and Premiere.
Nvidia unveiled a deal with Uber to partner on production of thousands of vehicles that can run as robotaxis on Uber’s service. Stellantis, maker of Fiat and Chrysler, will produce the cars. Uber said 5,000 of the cars will be delivered for use on its service, and Nvidia said it plans the Uber partnership to support 100,000 cars over time, starting in 2027.
Nvidia announced that it would invest $1 billion in Nokia, the Finnish telecommunications company that provides network equipment and software. As part of the deal, Nokia will adopt Nvidia’s new telecommunications hardware that is designed for artificial intelligence.
PayPal partners with OpenAI to let users pay for their shopping within ChatGPT.
⚱️ Gold Panning - For those who reached the bottom
I don’t have alot this week unfortunately - go have fun! its Halloween!! 🎃
Remember the Louvre heist last week? the German company that built the forklift is already using it in its marketing.
In case you hate Halloween, the holiday season basically starts tomorrow, as Mariah likes to remind us lol
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