If you tried to get ChatGPT’s take on your breakfast plans this morning, you probably got served something a lot less helpful than a menu.

Cloudflare suffered a major outage today, disrupting access to a wide range of websites and apps, including ChatGPT, Spotify, and even the New Jersey Transit authority. Cloudflare shares fell 2.83% this afternoon.

Often described as “the largest company you’ve never heard of,” Cloudflare manages and secures internet traffic so sites can load quickly and stay protected from overload or cyberattacks. The company said the outage began around 5:20 AM ET when it detected a sudden spike in unusual traffic. It added that there’s currently no evidence of a cyberattack or malicious activity.

By 9:57 AM, Cloudflare said the issue had been mostly resolved.

A familiar and growing problem

We’ve seen this movie before. Last year, CrowdStrike pushed a faulty software update that triggered what experts called the largest IT outage in history. Airlines suspended operations, hospitals lost access to patient records, and banks were locked out of critical systems. The fallout wiped about 11% off CrowdStrike’s stock price in a single day

Now, within a single month, we’ve seen three of the world’s biggest cloud provider pillars wobble: AWS, Azure, and Cloudflare. AWS suffered a daylong outage on October 20 due to DNS issues, disrupting everything from Disney+ to Reddit. Nine days later, Microsoft’s Azure platform went down for the same reason. Today’s Cloudflare outage adds yet another stress test to the internet’s reliability.

The twist this time is scale. Amazon and Microsoft carry market caps of $2.4 trillion and $3.6 trillion, respectively—far too large for a temporary outage to move their stocks meaningfully. But for specialized infrastructure firms like CrowdStrike, these incidents can shake customers’ faith and hurt the bottom line long after they’re resolved.

The internet isn’t as big as it looks

Today’s outage highlights just how dependent the modern internet—and the markets built on top of it—have become on a handful of providers. Even AI companies like OpenAI ultimately rely on Cloudflare, AWS, and Azure to stay online. A glitch at a lower layer can cascade upward, knocking out tools that millions now treat as essential.

This concentration isn’t accidental. "Due to cost of hosting web content, economic forces lead to consolidation of resources into a few very large players, but it is effectively putting all our eggs in one of three baskets," Cornell University professor Gregory Falco told BBC.

AWS controls roughly a third of the global cloud market, Azure holds about 20%, and Cloudflare routes and secures traffic for another 20% of the web. For investors, that concentration is a double-edged sword: These companies are incredibly efficient—until something breaks.—SY

🟢 What’s up

• Warner Bros. Discovery rallied 4.18% on reports that Paramount Skydance is preparing a $71 billion bid for the entertainment giant.
• Rheinmetall jumped 0.64% as the German defense giant said it expects sales to grow fivefold over the next five years, fueled by surging global demand for weapons systems amid rising geopolitical tensions and the war in Ukraine.
• Intuit climbed 0.58% on news it’s paying OpenAI more than $100 million a year to power new AI agents.
• Merck rose 3.84% following positive trial results for a heart drug the company sees as a major driver of future growth.
• Medtronic gained 4.69% after it beat fiscal second-quarter earnings expectations and raised its fiscal 2026 revenue growth outlook.

What’s down

• Battery maker Energizer Holdings tumbled 18.51% as weak Q4 results and a sharply lower outlook due to tariffs spooked investors.
• Payment processing company Klarna slipped 9.40% after a $95 million quarterly loss overshadowed its revenue beat.
• Nvidia and Microsoft announced a $15 billion investment in Anthropic. Nvidia fell 2.81%, while Microsoft dropped 2.70%.
• PDD Holdings fell 7.33% as its 9% revenue growth last quarter highlighted a clear slowdown from its hyper-growth years.
• Logistics company Ceva dropped 14.50% after announcing a dilutive 3 million-share public offering.

Can a one-hit wonder form the basis for a publicly traded company? We’re about to find out.

Baby Shark became the bane of parents everywhere nine years ago, and since then the animated short has racked up over 16.4 billion views—at an average of 4.7 million views per day—to become the most-watched YouTube video ever. Now Pinkfong, the South Korean children’s content company behind the earworm, has gone public—and successfully, at that.

This morning, the company debuted on the Kosdaq, South Korea’s small-cap index, with a $53 million IPO. Shares soared as much as 61.8% at one point, before the stock closed the session up 9.34%. Not too shabby for a company based on a catchy tune.

The question is if Pinkfong can expand beyond its biggest hit. It already has a number of other kid-focused IP in its portfolio, and analysts expect the success of South Korean entertainment imports like K-Pop Demon Hunters will translate to higher demand for future Pinkfong productions.

But only time will tell if the company’s next song can doo-doo-doo better than Baby Shark (seriously, though, don’t click that link if you don’t want the song stuck in your head all day).—MR

Like every home improvement project in all of history, Home Depot’s transformation is taking longer than expected.

For the third straight quarter, Home Depot missed earnings expectations after comparable sales only grew 0.2%, missing analyst expectations of a 1.4% increase. On top of that, the home improvement retailer cut its full-year outlook.

Shares sank 6.02% today.

Go big, or just go home?

In the earnings call, management blamed the poor showing on weaker demand for home improvement products due to a broader consumer spending slowdown. But of course, the housing market is playing a role, too.

Usually, Home Depot gains a significant portion of its business from renovations that take place before or after selling or moving into a new home. But with higher interest rates over the past few years, taking out a mortgage has become more expensive, pushing homeowners into a “deferral mindset” for renovations, CFO Richard McPhail told CNBC.

The combination of both a lagging labor market and falling home prices are causing consumers to rethink big investments in home upgrades.

A perfect storm: On top of all of that, fewer hurricanes last quarter meant fewer people were heading to Home Depot to buy supplies to fix storm damage.

The truth is, there isn’t a quick fix to what ails Home Depot. For instance, even though mortgage rates have slipped slightly, it hasn’t resulted in a pickup for the business.

“We’re watching movements in mortgage rates closely,” CEO Ted Decker said in the earnings call. “While we don’t see a near-term catalyst for acceleration of home-improvement demand, we’re also bullish on the long-term fundamentals of housing.”

Decker’s still optimistic about a comeback. He noted that as homes get older and home prices continue to appreciate, he sees a turnaround on the way. When it will materialize, however, is a different matter entirely.—LB

• Meta Platforms won its antitrust case against the FTC, with a judge ruling that the company does not have a monopoly over the social media market.
• Larry Summers is stepping back from public commitments in the wake of email exchanges with sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
• Take a look at Panera Bread’s new turnaround gameplan.
• Anthropic is now valued at roughly $350 billion after investments from Microsoft and Nvidia.
• Saudi Arabia is gearing up to announce a bunch of AI deals with US firms like Amazon, AMD, and xAI.
• Google just unveiled Gemini 3, its latest upgraded AI model.

We’ll get the first of many delayed government reports tomorrow with a look at the US trade deficit from way back in August. We’ve also got the minutes from the FOMC’s October meeting, which could provide pivotal insight into how the central bank is thinking about a rate cut in December—a decision that once seemed like a sure thing but has been cast into doubt lately.

As for earnings, all eyes turn to the big kahuna tomorrow afternoon: Nvidia. But there are still several other companies worth watching, including Palo Alto Networks, Target, Lowe’s, TJX, Wix, and Williams-Sonoma.