Latest news with #market capitalization
CNA
7 days ago
- Business
- CNA
Canada's Couche-Tard resumes share buyback after scrapping Seven & I acquisition bid (July 21)
(Corrects July 21 story to change market capitalization in paragraph 3 to about $53 billion from $15.95 billion) Canada's Alimentation Couche-Tard on Monday said it was resuming its share repurchase program days after the Circle K-parent scrapped its $46-billion attempt to buy Japan's Seven & I. The company said it would repurchase up to 77.1 million shares worth about $4.2 billion as it works to shore up shareholder value after the months-long effort to buy the Japan-based convenience store chain fell apart. Couche-Tard, which has a market capitalization of about $53 billion, had said last week that it was scrapping its bid for Seven & I as the Japanese retailer refused to engage constructively on the deal. If it had been successful, it would have been Japan's largest-ever foreign buyout. Couch-Tard's stock closed up 8.3 per cent on July 17 when it scrapped the deal for Seven & I. The stock is down about 5 per cent so far this year. The authorized share buyback program will begin July 23, and continue through July 22, 2026, Couche-Tard said.
Bloomberg
18-07-2025
- Business
- Bloomberg
CIBC Overtakes Scotiabank in Market Value After Stock's 47% Run
Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce has inched past Bank of Nova Scotia in market capitalization to become Canada's fourth-most valuable bank, as investor sentiment shifts in favor of lenders with more exposure to the domestic market. CIBC has been the top-performing major Canadian bank over the past year, with its shares soaring 47%, giving it a market value of C$94.6 billion ($68.9 billion) as of Friday's close. It hadn't outranked Scotiabank since the early 2000s, until this month.
Yahoo
13-07-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
AI helped save the chip industry. What happens if it turns out to be a bust?
Nvidia is now the first company to surge past $4 trillion in market capitalization, rebounding from its DeepSeek-induced slump earlier this year. Other AI chipmakers, including AMD and China's Huawei, are reporting strong financial results. Nearly every major chipmaker is now centering its strategy on AI. But what if AI doesn't work out? This isn't just a hypothetical question. Some signs suggest that AI growth is stalling, or at least slowing down. New models no longer show significant improvements from scaling up size or the amount of training data. Nobel laureate Demis Hassabis recently noted that 'we are no longer getting the same progress' on AI development. Andreessen Horowitz, one of the most prominent investors in AI, similarly shared concerns that AI model capabilities appeared to be plateauing. One reason for AI's slowing performance might be that models have already consumed most available digital data, leaving little left over for further improvement. Developers are instead turning to synthetic data, but it might be less effective—and might even make models worse. AI development is also enormously capital intensive. Training the most advanced models requires compute clusters costing billions of dollars. Even a single training run can cost tens of millions of dollars. Yet while development costs keep going up, monetary rewards are limited. Aside from AI coding assistants, there are few examples of AI generating returns that justify these immense capital investments. Some companies are already scaling back their AI infrastructure investment due to cost. Microsoft, for example, is 'slowing or pausing some early-stage projects' and has canceled equipment orders for several global data center projects. Meta, AWS and Google have all reportedly cut their GPU orders. Chip bottlenecks, power shortages, and public concerns are also barriers to mass AI adoption. If the AI boom peters out, that's bad news for the chip industry, which has used this new technology to avoid a serious slump. Chips are getting more expensive to make. Developing new manufacturing processes cost billions of dollars; building new plants can cost tens of billions of dollars. These costs are all passed onto consumers but, outside of AI, customers aren't keen on buying more expensive chips. The fancy technologies in today's AI processors aren't that useful for other purposes. AI delayed an industry reckoning: Manufacturing is getting more expensive, while performance gains are shrinking. The economic promise of AI justifies high chip prices, but if that goes away, the chip industry needs to find something else to persuade people to sustain investment in advanced chip manufacturing. Otherwise, advanced chipmaking will become unsustainable: New technologies will cost more and more, while delivering less and less. A chip industry slump will upend several geopolitical and economic objectives. Governments have poured billions of dollars into building domestic chip industries. U.S. President Donald Trump routinely threatens to use tariffs to bring semiconductor manufacturing back home. The U.S.'s supposed lead on chip development may prove to be a mirage, particularly as China dominates legacy chip production. And an AI reversal would shake up the world's tech sector, forcing Big Tech to rethink its bets. Given these stakes, policymakers need to encourage further innovation in AI by facilitating easier access to data, chips, power, and cooling. This includes pragmatic policies on copyright and data protection, a balanced approach to onshore and offshore chip manufacturing, and removing regulatory barriers to energy use and generation. Governments shouldn't necessarily apply the precautionary principle to AI; the benefits are too great to handicap its development, at least at these early stages. Nor should large-scale AI applications, such as autonomous vehicles or home robotics, face unreasonably high requirements for implementation. Investors should also explore alternate AI approaches that don't require as much data and infrastructure, potentially unlocking new AI growth. The industry must also explore non-AI applications for chips, if only to manage their risk. To ensure the chip industry can survive a slowdown, it must reduce the cost of advanced chipmaking. Companies should work together on research and development, as well as working with universities, to lower development costs. More investment is needed in chiplets, advanced packaging, and reconfigurable hardware. The industry must support interoperable standards, open-source tools, and agile hardware development. Shared, subsidized infrastructure for design and fabrication can help smaller companies finalize ideas before manufacturing. But, importantly, the drive to onshore manufacturing may be counterproductive: Doing so carelessly will significantly increase chip costs. The future of chips and AI are now deeply intertwined. If chips are to thrive, AI must grow. If not, the entire chip sector may now be in jeopardy. The opinions expressed in commentary pieces are solely the views of their authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and beliefs of Fortune. This story was originally featured on 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
Entrepreneur
11-07-2025
- Business
- Entrepreneur
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang Now as Wealthy as Warren Buffett
Nvidia became the first-ever company to top a $4 trillion market capitalization this week. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, 62, has reached the same amount of wealth as Warren Buffett. Huang and Buffett have been ping-ponging back and forth for the No. 9 and No. 10 richest people spots with around $143 billion to $144 billion in wealth each, according to Bloomberg's Billionaires Index. Related: Nvidia Pulls Ahead of Apple and Microsoft to Become the World's First $4 Trillion Public Company Huang, who has been selling Nvidia stock as part of pre-arranged agreements, has gained $28.7 billion in wealth this year alone, per the Index. He unloaded $36.4 million worth of stock on July 8, per an SEC filing. Earlier this week, Nvidia became the world's first-ever $4 trillion company, flying past Microsoft and Apple. Huang has sold more than $1.9 billion in Nvidia shares to date, per Bloomberg. Huang co-founded Nvidia in 1993 and has been leading it ever since. He owned about 3.5% of the AI chipmaker as of March. CNBC reports that Huang still has more than 858 million shares of Nvidia in various trusts and partnerships. Related: 'Decade of Autonomous Vehicles': Nvidia CEO Predicts Major Growth in Robotics, Self-Driving Cars
