Latest news with #MetaPlatforms
Calgary Herald
7 hours ago
- Business
- Calgary Herald
Meta 'thrilled' to partner with Enbridge on US$900M solar farm
Article content Calgary-based Enbridge's new solar facility near San Antonio, Texas, will help power Meta's data centre boom. Article content Dubbed Clear Fork, construction on the utility-scale solar facility is underway. When it's expected to complete in 2027, the farm will have a capacity of 600 megawatts. Article content Meta Platforms, Inc., which owns applications like Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, has signed a long-term contract for 100 per cent of the renewable output of the project, according to Enbridge. Article content Article content The project demonstrates growing demand for renewable power across North America, particularly from companies involved in technology and data centre operations, said Matthew Akman, executive vice president of corporate strategyu and president, power at Enbridge. Article content
Reuters
7 hours ago
- Business
- Reuters
Tech stocks drag on Nasdaq as investors monitor corporate profits, US tariff talks
July 22 (Reuters) - The Nasdaq was pressured by falling megacap stocks on Tuesday, a day before major tech results are due, while investors assessed a spate of second-quarter corporate earnings and watched for signs of progress in U.S. trade discussions. At 11:25 a.m. ET, the Dow Jones Industrial Average (.DJI), opens new tab rose 53.78 points, or 0.11%, to 44,372.37, the S&P 500 (.SPX), opens new tab lost 6.56 points, or 0.10%, to 6,298.48 and the Nasdaq Composite (.IXIC), opens new tab lost 100.59 points, or 0.48%, to 20,874.05. Heavyweight tech names were the biggest losers. Amazon (AMZN.O), opens new tab fell 1%, Meta Platforms (META.O), opens new tab shed 1.1%, Nvidia (NVDA.O), opens new tab was down 1.6% and Broadcom (AVGO.O), opens new tab lost 2.3%. The S&P's technology sector (.SPLRCT), opens new tab led sectoral losses and dropped 0.9%, cooling from a record high in the previous session. "Traders are just trying to position a little... because it's (technology) had such a big run. Some might be hedging a little bit before the earnings," said Max Wasserman, senior portfolio manager at Miramar Capital. Some underwhelming corporate results also dimmed sentiment. General Motors (GM.N), opens new tab saw its second-quarter profit skid 32% to $3 billion, with the automaker blaming hefty tariff costs for carving out $1.1 billion from its results. Its shares lost 6.9%, while peer Ford (F.N), opens new tab dipped 1%. Tariff actions also weighed on RTX (RTX.N), opens new tab and the defense company slashed its 2025 profit outlook, sending its shares down 2.2%. Lockheed Martin (LMT.N), opens new tab did not fare much better — its second-quarter profit nosedived nearly 80% after booking a hefty $1.6 billion in pre-tax losses. The ever-evolving nature of tariff headlines also had investors on edge as the August 1 deadline set by U.S. President Donald Trump for most countries approaches. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced plans to meet his Chinese counterpart next week, potentially discussing an extension to the August 12 deadline set for tariffs on imports from China. Meanwhile, trade negotiations stalled, with optimism for a breakthrough deal with India waning, according to Indian government officials, and as the EU weighed new countermeasures against the United States. Focus will shift to results for Google-parent Alphabet (GOOGL.O), opens new tab and EV-maker Tesla (TSLA.O), opens new tab as they kick off quarterly earnings for the "Magnificent Seven" stocks on Wednesday. Alphabet's shares dipped 0.4%, while Tesla edged up 0.5%. Elevated earnings expectations for these stocks are already priced to justify their stretched valuations, leaving little room for disappointment. "Unless you get real bad news or something that indicates a slowdown in the rate of growth, you could see a selloff," Wasserman said. The healthcare sector (.SPXHC), opens new tab jumped 1.2% to lead sectoral gains after declining for the last three sessions. Meanwhile, Philip Morris (PM.N), opens new tab fell 8.2% after reporting second-quarter revenue below expectations. Of the 89 S&P 500 companies that have reported second-quarter earnings so far, 78.7% surpassed analyst expectations, according to data compiled by LSEG. After last week's mixed economic data, traders have all but ruled out an interest-rate cut from the U.S. Federal Reserve next week. They now see about a 60% chance of a reduction in September, according to the CME's FedWatch tool. Advancing issues outnumbered decliners by a 2.17-to-1 ratio on the NYSE and by a 1.51-to-1 ratio on the Nasdaq. The S&P 500 posted 15 new 52-week highs and no new lows, while the Nasdaq Composite recorded 45 new highs and 36 new lows.
Yahoo
10 hours ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Canada's Enbridge to invest $900 million in Texas solar project
(Reuters) -Energy infrastructure company Enbridge said on Tuesday it had reached a final investment decision to invest $900 million on a 600 megawatt solar power project in Texas, as demand for clean energy from tech companies drives growth in renewables. Meta Platforms has signed a long-term contract to purchase 100% of the project's renewable output to help power its regional operations. Meta is among the several large tech firms investing in renewable energy to power their data centers. The Clear Fork project, located near San Antonio, is expected to become operational by 2027. "Clear Fork demonstrates the growing demand for renewable power across North America from blue-chip companies who are involved in technology and data center operations," said Matthew Akman, Enbridge's executive vice president of corporate strategy and president of power. Project construction is already underway and Enbridge expects the project to be accretive to its cash flow and earnings starting 2027.
Yahoo
11 hours ago
- Business
- Yahoo
KeyBanc Lifts Meta (META) to $800, Sees AI Fueling Future Upside
Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:) is one of the AI Stocks on Wall Street's Radar. On July 17, KeyBanc analyst Justin Patterson raised the firm's price target on the stock to $800 from $655 and kept an 'Overweight' rating on the shares. Owing to strong revenue momentum, Keybanc has raised its 2025 and 2026 revenue and EPS. However, it is also aware that there may be increased spending on artificial intelligence in terms of both capital expenses and operating costs. The firm doesn't think this is going to be a problem as long as Meta can explain how its AI investments are paying off. 'We expect 2Q revenue comes in at $45.3B, and expect 3Q revenue guidance for $45B-$47.5B (we are modeling $46.5B). While we have raised our 2025E and 2026E revenue and EPS to reflect revenue momentum, we are mindful that there are upward biases to capex and opex from AI investments and are thus slightly below consensus." While we acknowledge the potential of META as an investment, we believe certain AI stocks offer greater upside potential and carry less downside risk. If you're looking for an extremely undervalued AI stock that also stands to benefit significantly from Trump-era tariffs and the onshoring trend, see our free report on the best short-term AI stock. READ NEXT: and Disclosure: None. Error while retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error while retrieving data Error while retrieving data Error while retrieving data Error while retrieving data
Business Times
11 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Business Times
Beware, leaders: AI is the ultimate yes-man
I GREW up watching the tennis greats of yesteryear with my dad, but have only returned to the sport recently thanks to another family superfan, my wife. So perhaps it's understandable that to my adult eyes, it seemed like the current crop of stars, as awe-inspiring as they are, don't serve quite as hard as Pete Sampras or Goran Ivanisevic. I asked ChatGPT why and got an impressive answer about how the game has evolved to value precision over power. Puzzle solved! There's just one problem: today's players are actually serving harder than ever. While most CEOs probably don't spend a lot of time quizzing AI about tennis, they very likely do count on it for information and to guide their decision-making. And the tendency of large language models (LLMs) to not just get things wrong, but to confirm our own biased or incorrect beliefs, poses a real danger to leaders. ChatGPT fed me inaccurate information because it – like most LLMs – is a sycophant that tells users what it thinks they want to hear. Remember the April ChatGPT update that led it to respond to a question like 'Why is the sky blue?' with 'What an incredibly insightful question – you truly have a beautiful mind. I love you.'? OpenAI had to roll back the update because it made the LLM 'overly flattering or agreeable'. But while that toned down ChatGPT's sycophancy, it didn't eliminate it. That's because LLMs' desire to please is endemic, rooted in Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF), the way many models are 'aligned' or trained. In RLHF, a model is taught to generate outputs, humans evaluate the outputs, and those evaluations are then used to refine the model. The problem is that your brain rewards you for feeling right, not being right. So people give higher scores to answers they agree with. Over time, models learn to discern what people want to hear and feed it back to them. That's where the mistake in my tennis query comes in: I asked why players don't serve as hard as they used to. If I had asked the opposite – why they serve harder than they used to – ChatGPT would have given me an equally plausible explanation. (That's not a hypothetical – I tried, and it did.) Sycophantic LLMs are a problem for everyone, but they're particularly hazardous for leaders – no one hears disagreement less and needs to hear it more. CEOs today are already minimising their exposure to conflicting views by cracking down on dissent everywhere from Meta Platforms to JPMorgan Chase. Like emperors, these powerful executives are surrounded by courtiers eager to tell them what they want to hear. And also like emperors, they reward the ones who please them – and punish those who don't. BT in your inbox Start and end each day with the latest news stories and analyses delivered straight to your inbox. Sign Up Sign Up Rewarding sycophants and punishing truth-tellers, though, is one of the biggest mistakes leaders can make. Bosses need to hear when they're wrong. Amy Edmondson, probably the greatest living scholar of organisational behaviour, showed that the most important factor in team success was psychological safety – the ability to disagree, including with the team's leader, without fear of punishment. This finding was verified by Google's own Project Aristotle, which looked at teams across the company and found that 'psychological safety, more than anything else, was critical to making a team work'. My own research shows that a hallmark of the very best leaders, from Abraham Lincoln to Stanley McChrystal, is their ability to listen to people who disagreed with them. LLMs' sycophancy can harm leaders in two closely related ways. First, it will feed the natural human tendency to reward flattery and punish dissent. If your computer constantly tells you that you're right about everything, it's only going to make it harder to respond positively when someone who works for you disagrees with you. Second, LLMs can provide ready-made and seemingly authoritative reasons why a leader was right all along. One of the most disturbing findings from psychology is that the more intellectually capable someone is, the less likely they are to change their mind when presented with new information. Why? Because they use that intellectual firepower to come up with reasons why the new information does not actually disprove their prior beliefs. Psychologists call this motivated reasoning. LLMs threaten to turbocharge that phenomenon. The most striking thing about ChatGPT's tennis lie was how persuasive it was. It included six separate plausible reasons. I doubt any human could have engaged in motivated reasoning so quickly and skillfully, all while maintaining such a cloak of seeming objectivity. Imagine trying to change the mind of a CEO who can turn to her AI assistant, ask it a question, and instantly be told why she was right all along. The best leaders have always gone to great lengths to remember their own fallibility. Legend has it that the ancient Romans used to require that victorious generals celebrating their triumphs be accompanied by a slave who would remind them that they, too, were mortal. Apocryphal or not, the sentiment is wise. Today's leaders will need to work even harder to resist the blandishments of their electronic minions and remember that sometimes, the most important words their advisers can share are, 'I think you're wrong.' BLOOMBERG The writer teaches leadership at the Yale School of Management and is the author of Indispensable: When Leaders Really Matter
