NORTHWARDBy Prajwal Giri
Markets
Stocks closed at a fresh record Thursday, with the S&P 500 up 0.65% to 7,798.99 after briefly topping 7,800 intraday for the first time, the Nasdaq Composite gaining 0.81% to 26,803.03 on strength in Meta, Micron, and Netflix, and the Dow adding 69.72 points (0.13%) to 53,839.99. The rally builds on Tuesday's cooler-than-expected July CPI print, up 0.2% month-over-month, which reinforced bets that the Fed holds rates steady at its September meeting.
Friday's session hinges on the July retail sales report, due at 8:30 a.m. ET — the last major data point before the Fed's pre-meeting blackout — with economists looking for a modest 0.1%-0.3% month-over-month gain. Futures were choppy ahead of the print: S&P 500 futures near flat, Nasdaq-100 futures up 0.11%, and Dow futures down roughly 71 points.
AI infrastructure names dominated the week's earnings action. Nebius surged 34% to $247.05 after revenue jumped 454% year-over-year to $582 million and adjusted EBITDA swung to a $236 million profit, while CoreWeave rose 19% to $107.73 on revenue of $2.58 billion (up 112% year-over-year) and raised full-year guidance to $12.4-$13.2 billion. Cerebras moved the other way, falling roughly 14% in its second earnings report since going public.
Tech
Google's Gemini app crossed 1 billion monthly active users this week, CEO Sundar Pichai said, calling it the fastest-growing product in the company's 28-year history and the 14th Google service to reach the milestone — up from 950 million users in July and 400 million just last May. The growth puts Gemini roughly in step with ChatGPT, which passed the same mark in June.
Anthropic has locked in a 20-year, 191-megawatt data-center lease at Riot Platforms' Rockdale, Texas campus, according to Bloomberg — a deal worth roughly $9.1 billion in base revenue through 2048, with extension options that could push the total value to $16.1 billion.
OpenAI expanded its Daybreak initiative for security researchers into two tiers: Daybreak Blue, a version of GPT-5.6 Sol with its standard cyber guardrails removed, and Daybreak Red, which grants access to a new purpose-built model, GPT-5.6-Cyber, for authorized offensive-security work.
Not financial advice — for informational purposes only.