Let’s talk about some of tech’s biggest names—and no, not the one Jensen Huang runs.

While Nvidia does dominate the AI headlines, two software heavyweights just delivered earnings that offer a clearer read on how the AI trade is holding up:

• Salesforce topped fourth-quarter expectations on both revenue and earnings, with sales rising 12% year over year, its fastest growth rate in two years. While its fiscal 2027 revenue outlook came in slightly below Wall Street forecasts, management underscored confidence by authorizing a $50 billion share repurchase program and increasing its quarterly dividend by nearly 6%. Shares climbed 4.01% today.
• Snowflake also beat quarterly estimates, with product revenue, its core growth driver, jumping 30% to $1.23 billion. It guided to $5.66 billion in product revenue for fiscal 2027, a 27% increase year over year. Shareholders liked the sound of that, and the stock rose 2.23%.

Rewriting the AI narrative

These results come as software stocks have spent the last few weeks sliding on fears AI could disrupt SaaS economics, worries that intensified after Anthropic’s latest releases rattled the sector and erased nearly $1 trillion in value earlier this month.

Since then, the tone has shifted. Anthropic’s enterprise partnerships and Claude updates suggest AI may integrate into existing platforms rather than replace them, transforming the narrative from disruption to augmentation. It’s a stance Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang supports: He says “markets got it wrong,” contending that agentic AI won’t sideline software platforms, but depend on them more heavily, driving greater productivity.

To that end, Salesforce has rolled out an AI-powered Slack assistant, closed its $8 billion Informatica acquisition, and unveiled plans to acquire marketing firm Qualified. The company is also accelerating adoption of Agentforce, its AI technology to automate customer service and other enterprise workflows: annual recurring revenue for Agentforce climbed 169% year over year to more than $800 million last quarter, making it an increasingly important part of Salesforce’s business.

Meanwhile, Snowflake is taking a similar approach: it launched its Snowflake Intelligence agentic platform in November, signed the largest deal in company history worth over $400 million with an undisclosed client, and entered separate multi-year $200 million partnerships with OpenAI and Anthropic to integrate advanced models into its platform.

While both companies seem to be well prepared for AI’s growing influence in their industry, the market’s muted reaction to earnings results suggests caution lingers. The numbers were solid. The strategy is clear. But with Salesforce still down 24.72% in 2026, and Snowflake down 21.14% year to date, investors aren’t ready to declare either stock safe just yet.—SY

🟢 What’s up

• Stellantis rose 4.41% as investors looked past a $26 billion EV-related charge and focused on stronger second-half results that hint at a turnaround.
• eBay popped 3.01% as the company announced plans to cut 800 jobs, about 6% of its full-time workforce.
• Krispy Kreme gained 27.76% after delivering its strongest quarterly profit beat in years and issuing a strong sales growth outlook.
• Celsius climbed 6.94% on fourth-quarter results that topped revenue and earnings expectations, with sales more than doubling year over year.
• Janus Henderson Group jumped 6.1% as Victory Capital submitted a $57.04 per share bid, outpacing an earlier offer from Nelson Peltz’s Trian Fund Management.
• Penn Entertainment advanced 16.75% following fourth-quarter revenue and earnings that exceeded Wall Street forecasts.

What’s down

• Nvidia fell 5.49% as its latest outlook did little to ease concerns around an AI bubble.
• Broadcom slipped 3.19% despite projecting at least 1 million chip sales by 2027—the fruits of its stacked design technology.
• Trade Desk dropped 4.81% after forecasting Q1 revenue below analyst expectations.
• C3.ai sank 18.53% on a third-quarter miss and newly announced layoffs.
• Synopsys declined 5.16% after a softer-than-expected full-year guidance overshadowed a 65% revenue surge.
• Egg and butter producer Vital Farms slid 10.81% after a weak full-year outlook dampened otherwise solid quarterly results.

Nvidia beat the AI bubble allegations with yet another quarter of impressive growth: revenue climbed 73% year over year, the chipmaker’s best growth rate in four quarters, while EPS rose 82%—marking Nvidia’s 13th consecutive quarter of beating profit expectations. So why did the stock just have its worst day of trading since last April?

Blame two forces squeezing the company from both sides:

• On the one hand are fears that hyperscalers like Meta Platforms and Alphabet are overpromising with massive capex outlays—largely to Nvidia—that will evaporate if AI doesn’t live up to investors’ lofty expectations.
• On the other hand are the more recent worries that AI will, in fact, live up to expectations—and in doing so, decimate industries across the market.

We can’t predict the future, so who knows if either one of those fears will come to pass. But there’s a silver lining to today’s selloff: Nvidia looks undervalued, a phrase nobody has said in about four years. Shares are trading with a forward P/E of around 25—well off the stock’s historical average of 31.6, and below other Magnificent 7 peers like Apple and Amazon.

Maybe it’s time for investors to buy the dip.—MR

Much like Paramount’s own Mission: Impossible franchise, the battle over Warner Bros. Discovery somehow is still not over—long after the saga probably should have wrapped up.

Paramount Skydance officially increased its offer for Warner Bros. Discovery to $31 per share earlier this week, in addition to promising a “$7 billion regulatory termination fee” if the transaction is blocked by regulators. That was good enough that Warner Bros. decided to keep talks with Paramount going, despite previously rejecting its offer.

Enter the other key player in this tale: Netflix, which made a deal with Warner in December to buy its streaming and studios business. You might think that a competitor’s strong counteroffer would be a headwind for Netflix—but actually, shareholders are cheering the news that the streamer might walk away from the deal altogether.

The reason is that this acquisition would be expensive for Netflix, and would require taking on debt—a prospect that shareholders were none too thrilled about. In fact, some experts think the real winner of this battle is whoever loses, given both companies will likely overpay for WBD.

The side plot

Amid all of this backroom dealmaking, earnings season has arrived. This moment gives investors a chance to rate each company’s performance while they’re wheeling and dealing:

• Warner Bros. Discovery, the legacy giant everyone is fighting for, disclosed a wider-than-expected loss when it reported Q4 earnings today, largely due to losses in its cable TV business. Revenue also fell 6% year over year. Shares sank 0.35% today.
• Yesterday, Paramount Skydance also gave investors lukewarm news about its Q4: The company reported that, while its direct-to-consumer revenue jumped 10% year over year, its TV media revenue fell 5% over the same period. But shares of Paramount rose 10.04% today, partially due to its good news about streaming sales growth, and partially thanks to its potential new deal for Warner.

With this much action, it’s only a matter of time until we get the cinematic adaption of this boardroom drama.—LB

• The head of the World Economic Forum is stepping down after the organization opened a probe into his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein.
• CNBC is restructuring its newsroom to combine its TV and digital operations.
• The global memory chip shortage could shrink the smartphone market by 13%.
• Retail traders spent this morning buying Nvidia stock in record numbers.
• Unlikely bedfellows: Big Oil is asking President Trump to stop attacking offshore wind.
• Walmart is paying $100 million to settle an FTC lawsuit over deceiving delivery drivers about how much they could earn.
• We’re living in the weirdest timeline: AJ Scaramucci, son of SkyBridge Capital’s Anthony Scaramucci, just won a bidding war for Logan Paul’s $16.5 million Pokemon card.

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