All posts tagged: Equity

Bank of America Jumps On Record Equity Trading Revenue, Net Interest Income Forecast Increase, Offset By FICC Miss

Bank of America Jumps On Record Equity Trading Revenue, Net Interest Income Forecast Increase, Offset By FICC Miss

Published by Jenni Sidey

Following stellar equity trading results from Goldman and JPMorgan, this morning Bank of America reported that its traders also pulled in the business’s highest quarterly revenue in more than a decade, riding a wave of volatility that pushed the firm’s stock-trading desk to an all-time record. Bank of America said Q1 profit rose 17% from a year earlier, while net income came in at $8.58 billion. That amounted to $1.11 a share, above analyst estimates of $1.01. Revenue was 7% higher at $30.27 billion, driven by solid net interest income, sales and trading and investment banking fees.  Revenue from equity trading climbed 30% to $2.8 billion in the first quarter, beating expectations, while fixed-income trading, which fell short of a consensus of analyst estimates, rose less than 1% to $3.5 billion, similar to Goldman’s FICC miss. Bank have benetted from a volatile quarter, when the Iran war sent oil prices surging and concerns about artificial intelligence and private credit whipsawed stocks. Trading desks were already on a roll since President Donald Trump won the 2024 election, as …

TACO Vs TAW: Fade This (Equity) Rally

TACO Vs TAW: Fade This (Equity) Rally

Published by Jenni Sidey

Authored by Peter Tchir via Academy Securities, Ceasefire? The U.S., via Pakistan, and apparently consistent with negotiations being carried out by Witkoff and Kushner, has delivered a 15 point agreement for a ceasefire. Markets responded with oil down (Brent futures, at 5:30 am are back down below $100, from a high of $105 on Tuesday). Stock futures and treasuries are rebounding as well (even the 2-year, after the drubbing it took after yesterday’s auction noticeable for an absence of “direct” bids). Many of the Polymarket Strait of Hormuz “prediction” markets have barely moved in response to the ceasefire proposal announcement, fwiw. What to do? We Have Already Had Regime Change I think the most important thing said yesterday, was that the President, for the first time, made the case that the regime is so different (due to so many senior leaders being killed), there has been a regime change. We have argued, since day 1, that true regime change, without boots on the ground, etc., is difficult to achieve. Finding a powerful enough faction who wants to …

What happened at Nvidia GTC: NemoClaw, Robot Olaf, and a  trillion bet

What happened at Nvidia GTC: NemoClaw, Robot Olaf, and a $1 trillion bet

Published by skeptic

CEO Jensen Huang took the stage at Nvidia’s GTC conference this week in his signature leather jacket to deliver a two-and-a-half-hour keynote, projecting $1 trillion in AI chip sales through 2027, declaring that every company needs an “OpenClaw strategy,” and closing with a rambling Olaf robot that had to get its mic cut. The message was hard to miss: Nvidia wants to be foundational to everything, from AI training to autonomous vehicles to Disney parks.  On this episode of TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, Kirsten Korosec, Anthony Ha, and Sean O’Kane break down what Nvidia’s growing web of AI infrastructure partnerships actually means for startups, and discuss more of the week’s headlines.  Subscribe to Equity on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod.  Source link

PopSockets founder David Barnett talks about building a viral business

PopSockets founder David Barnett talks about building a viral business

Published by skeptic

David Barnett has learned a lot since first launching PopSockets more than a decade ago.  As the tale goes, the former philosophy professor was looking for an easy way to hold his headphones and went on to create one of the most viral phone accessories of all time: A device that grips to the back of the phone and can be used as a kickstand or a handle — better known as the PopSocket.  Barnett sat down with Equity this week to talk about his journey building this company from his garage, why he decided to never take on traditional venture capital funding, and some of the lessons he’s learned while scaling the business.  “I was a philosophy professor, so I had no experience with manufacturing,” he recalled, adding that he also lacked experience in business, tax, accounting, and finance. “I burned through a lot of money with no revenue,” he continued, adding that he had “wave after wave of manufacturing defects” during the early days.   Still, he managed along and was able to land …

Why AI startups are selling the same equity at two different prices

Why AI startups are selling the same equity at two different prices

Published by skeptic

As competition among AI startups heats up, founders and VCs are turning to novel valuation mechanisms to manufacture a perception of market dominance. Until recently, the most sought-after companies raised multiple rounds of funding in quick succession at escalating valuations. However, because constant fundraising distracts founders from building their products, lead VCs have devised a new pricing structure that effectively consolidates what would have been two separate funding cycles into one. Recent rounds employing this scheme include Aaru’s Series A. The synthetic-customer research startup raised a round led by Redpoint, which invested a large portion of its check at a $450 million valuation, the Wall Street Journal reported. Redpoint then invested a smaller portion at a $1 billion valuation, and other VCs joined at that same $1 billion price point, according to our reporting. TechCrunch was the first to report Aaru’s financing, including its multi-tiered valuation. The approach allows desirable startups like Aaru to call themselves a unicorn — valued at more than $1 billion — even though a significant portion of the equity was …

Ben Affleck and Matt Damon’s Artists Equity Signs Netflix Deal

Ben Affleck and Matt Damon’s Artists Equity Signs Netflix Deal

Published by Daniella Wilson

Ben Affleck and Matt Damon’s Artists Equity has found a streaming home with Netflix, signing a multi-year streaming first-look deal, production and distribution agreement with the company. Artists Equity, which was also founded by RedBird Capital’s Gerry Cardinale, recently partnered with Netflix on the crime thriller The Rip, starring both Affleck and Damon, which spent three weeks as the No. 1 movie on Netflix’s Top 10 chart, according to the streamer. Netflix is also set to release Affleck’s next directorial feature, Animals, starring Affleck, Kerry Washington and Gillian Anderson, which is due out later this year. The news of the Netflix partnership comes after Artists Equity entered into a similar pact with Sony but for theatrical releases. Under that three-year deal, Sony will distribute Artists Equity’s theatrical films globally and will additionally finance the films and handle all ancillaries, with Artists Equity having the option to co-finance certain projects. (Sony, notably, does not have a sister streaming service.) In terms of which projects will end up under the Netflix streaming deal or the Sony theatrical pact, …

Google VP warns that two types of AI startups may not survive

Google VP warns that two types of AI startups may not survive

Published by skeptic

The generative AI boom minted a startup a minute. But as the dust starts to settle, two once-hot business models are looking more like cautionary tales: LLM wrappers and AI aggregators.  Darren Mowry, who leads Google’s global startup organization across Cloud, DeepMind, and Alphabet, says startups with these hooks have their “check engine light” on. LLM wrappers are essentially startups that wrap existing large language models, like Claude, GPT, or Gemini, with a product or UX layer to solve a specific problem. An example would be a startup that uses AI to helps students study. “If you’re really just counting on the back end model to do all the work and you’re almost white-labeling that model, the industry doesn’t have a lot of patience for that anymore,” Mowry said on this week’s episode of Equity.  Wrapping “very thin intellectual property wrapped around Gemini or GPT-5” signals you’re not differentiating yourself, Mowry says.  “You’ve got to have deep, wide moats that are either horizontally differentiated or something really specific to a vertical market” for a startup …

Global equity funds attract biggest inflow in five weeks as concerns around AI ease

Global equity funds attract biggest inflow in five weeks as concerns around AI ease

Published by Sam Flores

Feb 20 : Global equity funds received their strongest inflows in five weeks in the seven days to February 18, as easing concerns over artificial intelligence stocks and investor rotation into other sectors supported demand, while renewed hopes for Federal Reserve rate cuts lifted sentiment toward U.S. growth. Investors poured $36.33 billion into global equity funds during the week, marking the strongest weekly inflow since January 14, LSEG Lipper data showed. U.S. consumer price data released last Friday showed inflation rose 2.4 per cent year-on-year in January, close to expectations of a 2.5 per cent increase, reinforcing market bets on two Federal Reserve rate cuts this year. Leading regional inflows, European funds attracted $17.22 billion, broadly in line with the previous week’s $17.68 billion, supported by the STOXX 600 index climbing to a record high. U.S. funds recorded net inflows of $11.77 billion after a $1.48 billion outflow the previous week, while Asian funds drew a net $3.8 billion. Among sectoral funds, industrials, metals and mining, and technology were in demand, attracting weekly net inflows …

The enterprise AI land grab is on. Glean is building the layer beneath the interface.

The enterprise AI land grab is on. Glean is building the layer beneath the interface.

Published by skeptic

The battle for enterprise AI is heating up. Microsoft is bundling Copilot into Office. Google is pushing Gemini into Workspace. OpenAI and Anthropic are selling directly to enterprises. Every SaaS vendor now ships an AI assistant.  In the scramble for the interface, Glean is betting on something less visible: becoming the intelligence layer beneath it.  Seven years ago, Glean set out to be the Google for enterprise — an AI-powered search tool designed to index and search across a company’s SaaS tool library, from Slack to Jira, Google Drive to Salesforce. Today, the company’s strategy has shifted from building a better enterprise chatbot to becoming the connective tissue between models and enterprise systems. “The layer we built initially – a good search product – required us to deeply understand people and how they work and what their preferences are,” Jain told TechCrunch on last week’s episode of Equity, which we recorded at Web Summit Qatar. “All of that is now becoming foundational in terms of building high quality agents.” He says that while large language …

Providence Equity in Support of Casey Wasserman Selling Agency

Providence Equity in Support of Casey Wasserman Selling Agency

Published by Daniella Wilson

Following Casey Wasserman‘s recent announcement that he is putting his agency up for sale, Providence Equity has issued a statement in support of Mike Watts’ leadership in the time of change and overall future of the company. In a statement shared with The Hollywood Reporter, a Providence spokesperson said, “We believe deeply in the strength of the Company and have full confidence in Mike and the leadership team, as well as in the exceptional employees across the organization. We remain fully committed to investing in its growth, expanding its capabilities across sports, music, and entertainment, and supporting the extraordinary talent, brands, and properties the Company is proud to represent.” Wasserman sent a memo to staffers Friday night where he revealed he’d be selling the agency. The news follows a wave of backlash surrounding correspondence between the former CEO and Ghislaine Maxwell in the recently released Epstein files. In his message to staff, he wrote that he had “become a distraction” to the company’s efforts, which “is why I have begun the process of selling the company, …