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Yahoo
a few seconds ago
- Yahoo
DOGE plans to use AI to identify 50% of 200,000 federal regulations that can be eliminated by Trump
Federal government agencies are reportedly using an artificial intelligence tool from Elon Musk's DOGE initiative to identify regulations to cut, with a goal of cutting about half from a list of 200,000 federal rules. The tool, the 'DOGE AI Deregulation Tool,' is already in use at the Department of Housing and Urban Development as well as the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, The Washington Post reports. The U.S. Doge Service described using the tool to analyze about 200,000 regulations to find ones that officials believe are neither necessary nor legally required, with a goal of cutting half by next January and saving the government trillions of dollars in spending by the anniversary of Trump's inauguration, according to a PowerPoint presentation obtained by The Post. The DOGE tool has already been used to review more than 1,000 'regulatory sections' at the housing department, as well as to drive '100% of deregulations' at the consumer protection bureau, according to the presentation. The White House and the housing agency described the efforts as preliminary. 'The DOGE experts creating these plans are the best and brightest in the business and are embarking on a never-before-attempted transformation of government systems and operations to enhance efficiency and effectiveness,' an administration spokesperson told the newspaper. The Independent requested comment from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Ohio gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, one of the architects of the DOGE program, once mused about mass-deleting federal spending by culling large numbers of government workers. 'If your Social Security number ends in an odd number, you're out. If it ends in an even number, you're in,' he said in an interview with podcaster Lex Fridman in September. 'There's a 50 percent cut right there. Of those who remain, if your Social Security number starts in an even number, you're in, and if it starts with an odd number, you're out. Boom. That's a 75 percent reduction done.' Musk left the Trump administration in May, and in that time, DOGE failed to achieve the trillion-dollar cuts to federal spending the billionaire suggested might be possible. The effort — housed in a government tech agency renamed as the U.S. DOGE Service via executive order signed by the president,— was met with sharp criticism from Democratic officials, as well as scores of lawsuits from agency employees and advocacy groups arguing the initiative flouted key parts of transparency rules, federal rule-making guidelines, and budget laws. In its first six months, the Trump administration implemented actions reducing regulatory costs by $86 billion and 52.2 million hours in paperwork, according to the American Action Forum.
Yahoo
a few seconds ago
- Yahoo
2 High-Flying Artificial Intelligence (AI) Stocks to Sell Before They Plummet 74% and 30%, According to Select Wall Street Analysts
Key Points Many companies in the center of the AI revolution have seen their stock prices soar in the last three years. These two companies have produced very strong operating results. But their stock prices have outpaced their financial growth, leading to sky-high valuations. 10 stocks we like better than Palantir Technologies › Artificial intelligence (AI) has become one of the biggest talking points for businesses over the last few years. The number of S&P 500 companies mentioning "AI" on their earnings call climbed from less than 75 in 2022 to 241 during the first quarter, according to FactSet Insight. A handful of companies have built big businesses around demand for artificial intelligence, or integrated AI to rapidly expand their addressable markets. Many of those companies have seen their stock prices soar over the last few years. But not every high-flying AI stock is worth buying after a massive run up in its price. Wall Street analysts have soured on two of the strongest performers over the last few years. Some analysts now see tremendous downsides ahead. Here are two AI stocks that could plummet over the next year, according to select Wall Street analysts. 1. Palantir Technologies (74% potential downside) Palantir Technologies (NASDAQ: PLTR) has been one of the best-performing stocks over the last few years. Since the start of 2023, the stock price has climbed an eye-popping 2,290%, and it now trades with a market cap exceeding $350 billion, as of this writing. But multiple analysts think the stock has climbed too far, too fast. Just seven analysts covering the stock rate it a buy or the equivalent. Seventeen say to hold it, and Palantir has four sell ratings. The lowest price target on the Street is RBC's Rishi Jaluria, who has a $40 price target on the stock, a 74% drop from its current price. The reason for the low price target isn't lack of financial results. Palantir has seen its revenue grow substantially over the last few years, as it expands its addressable market through its Artificial Intelligence Platform, or AIP. The new platform makes it easier for users to interact with the big data software and find useful business insights and help make decisions. That's expanded the use cases for Palantir's software, especially as businesses generate more and more data. As a result, Palantir's U.S. commercial revenue has climbed quickly, including a 71% increase in the first quarter. Moreover, Palantir has exhibited tremendous operating leverage. Instead of focusing on marketing and sales, CEO Alex Karp has put most of Palantir's manpower into building a better product. The idea is a better product will do the selling for itself. As a result, adjusted operating margin climbed to 44% in the first quarter, up from 36% in the first quarter last year. Indeed, Palantir is firing on all cylinders. But Jaluria and many others on Wall Street think the valuation of the stock has climbed too high. "We cannot rationalize why Palantir is the most expensive name in software. Absent a substantial beat-and-raise quarter elevating the near-term growth trajectory, valuation seems unsustainable," he said. Shares of Palantir currently trade for 228 times forward earnings and 78 times revenue expectations over the next 12 months. To put that in perspective, only a handful of S&P 500 stocks trade for more than 100 times earnings, and no others trade for more than 26 times sales expectations. Meanwhile, there are other companies growing sales even faster than Palantir, so it's a very hard multiple to justify. 2. CrowdStrike (26% potential downside) CrowdStrike (NASDAQ: CRWD) has seen its share price climb 352% since the start of 2023 on the strength of its Falcon security platform. Despite a massive outage that shut down numerous IT systems around the world last July, the company has bounced back quickly. The stock has more than doubled since its lows last summer, reaching a market cap of nearly $120 billion. But analysts are starting to look at CrowdStrike's stock with an increasingly critical eye. The stock received three downgrades this month from buy to hold, and one analyst initiated coverage with a hold as well. Over the last three months its buy ratings on Wall Street dropped from 41 to 31. And the lowest price target among them is $350, implying a 26% drop from the price as of this writing. Again, valuation appears to be the biggest concern for the stock. Operationally, CrowdStrike has managed to grow its customer base as more enterprises look to consolidate their cybersecurity needs and opt to use CrowdStrike's broad portfolio of services. Forty-eight percent of its customers now use at least six of its modules, as of the end of the first quarter. That's up from 40% two years ago. CrowdStrike is leveraging AI on its platform with agentic AI capabilities through its new Charlotte platform, which helps take action upon detecting a security threat to button up the vulnerability. That's on top of its machine learning capabilities, which help it detect those threats in the first place. And with a growing customer base, it has more data to ingest into its AI algorithms, giving it a significant advantage over smaller competitors. CrowdStrike has managed very strong growth over the last few years. Its annually recurring revenue climbed 20% in the first quarter, exceeding its guidance, and management expects that number to accelerate through the rest of the year as more businesses adopt its Falcon Flex platform. Still, the stock now trades at a price-to-sales ratio of 22 times revenue expectations over the next 12 months. And while that might not seem so expensive compared to Palantir, it makes it the third-highest priced stock in the S&P 500 by that valuation metric. And if you prefer to look at its earnings, it's one of the handful of stocks in the index trading above 100 times estimates, 135 times, to be exact. While it's possible CrowdStrike or Palantir continue to climb higher from here, it's probably worth taking money off the table at this point and finding better values in the market. Do the experts think Palantir Technologies is a buy right now? The Motley Fool's expert analyst team, drawing on years of investing experience and deep analysis of thousands of stocks, leverages our proprietary Moneyball AI investing database to uncover top opportunities. They've just revealed their to buy now — did Palantir Technologies make the list? When our Stock Advisor analyst team has a stock recommendation, it can pay to listen. After all, Stock Advisor's total average return is up 1,041% vs. just 183% for the S&P — that is beating the market by 858.71%!* Imagine if you were a Stock Advisor member when Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you'd have $636,628!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you'd have $1,063,471!* The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years. Don't miss out on the latest top 10 list, available when you join Stock Advisor. See the 10 stocks » *Stock Advisor returns as of July 21, 2025 Adam Levy has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends CrowdStrike and Palantir Technologies. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy. 2 High-Flying Artificial Intelligence (AI) Stocks to Sell Before They Plummet 74% and 30%, According to Select Wall Street Analysts was originally published by The Motley Fool Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Forbes
2 minutes ago
- Forbes
Silicon Valley Is Nearing A Breaking Point
American comedian Gallagher (born Leo Gallagher Jr) moving fast and breaking things at the Rosemont ... More Horizon, Rosemont, Illinois, July 10, 1981. (Photo by) The current mood in Silicon Valley seems to be dominated by this sentiment, originally popularized by Facebook. And for many leaders in the tech center of the universe, Silicon Valley, it has spread beyond just information technology innovation and into a sense of how to reinvent all walks of life, all industries, and even politics. For many of the giants in today's tech and innovation sector, technology is by itself the solution to everything. It is Schumpeterian thinking dialed up to eleven. It is quasi-religious, in that there is a sense that a great technology flood will wash over the economy and society and wash clean the ills, leaving behind efficient, reinvented new industries, regulations (if even needed at all) and personal behavior. Some of this is a byproduct of ideology and an independent streak – an understandable frustration that today's systems are antiquated and in many cases broken, giving the idea of starting from scratch a romantic appeal. These are brilliant people who think big and so aren't tethered to old 'this is how it's done because this is how it's always been done' thinking. Some of this is a byproduct of naivety and not ideology – I once sat in a meeting while a very successful individual from Silicon Valley lamented how hard it was to change Sacramento… and concluded that his next step was therefore to go fix Washington, DC. Because of course changing Washington DC would be easier than changing a state government. Sure. This combination of ideology and naivety has recently impacted how some of the most powerful in Silicon Valley view the climate change challenge, among other 'non-tech' issues. For some of these titans, there is a sense that the people most in need of innovative solutions around issues like climate have rejected them personally, so the heck with those issues, no need to care about all that fluffery anymore. For others, there is a sense that what is needed isn't to try to improve the current infrastructure over time, but simply to effectively start over. For example: Working with today's utilities on energy efficiency is a waste of time, go invent commercially-viable fusion-based nuclear power and the rest (ie, who will finance those plants, who will build those plants, who will maintain those plants, who will distribute the power from those plants) will simply sort itself out. These sentiments may seem in opposition to each other, but in reality they are simply two sides of the same techno-superiority coin. So, moving fast and breaking things (either ignoring petty issues like a rapidly degrading global climate or undermined political-economic foundations, or assuming they'll be addressed by unnamed others because, you know, 'Innovation') is pretty much how many of the leaders in Silicon Valley are setting their agendas these days. But here's the thing – they would never think to do this with data center construction. Nor with IT networks or microchips or any of the other hardware and infrastructure that they know they fully depend upon for their own innovations to work. These giants of the tech industry know full well that they can't 'move fast and break things' when it comes to building out and maintaining the infrastructure that is core to their own operations. They employ huge teams of project developers who are tasked with definitely not being sloppy and letting things break. They pay for the careful maintenance of decades-old communications infrastructure. Unlike fuzzy concepts like climate change and politics, these are very concrete systems that must be built the right way, not just assumed to be built by someone else unnamed, and (of course!) incorporating a lot of 'old tech' alongside innovations rather than replacing it. This infrastructure is very real to these tech leaders, and thus given the respect and investment it deserves. As a rapidly degrading global climate and increasingly undermined political-economic foundations come to the fore, they will also start to become very real to these same leaders. Natural disasters are already affecting the tech sector's customers, workforces, and infrastructure. Political-economic uncertainty will begin impacting revenues and costs (see Exhibit A: Tariff uncertainty, and Exhibit B: Unforecasted and significant costs recently incurred by various universities, law firms and media companies – will the tech industry be next?). As these risks start to directly impact the day to day business of these tech leaders, they will no longer be able to consider them some distant concepts to be treated academically. They will have to invest into clean energy, climate adaptation and resiliency, clean water, and stable politics. Or their companies, industries and personal wealth will suddenly start to directly suffer the consequences. The good news is that Silicon Valley has a long and proven history of building great infrastructure. When push comes to shove, 'move fast and break things' quickly gets put aside in favor of professional, thorough, critical infrastructure investments. All that needs to happen is for their definition of 'critical infrastructure' to be broadened to include the planet they live on and the social and economic foundations that they depend upon. Silicon Valley may soon be at this breaking point, if not already there. Not abandoning techno-centric viewpoints and big bold ideas. Just no longer naively leaving these other crucial underpinnings like the environment, the economy and society to someone else to deal with. And when that happens, when the technology Great Flood assumption is abandoned and these brilliant minds are put to work actually pragmatically addressing this 'infrastructure' broadly defined… we will see an amazing resurgence of actual investments and scalable solutions for these mounting challenges. The innovative power of Silicon Valley is one of the most powerful forces humanity has ever built, and harnessed correctly accomplishes amazing things. Just as when a fever breaks, when Silicon Valley finally reaches this breaking point it will be a very good thing.
