Tech stocks sank on Thursday amid uncertainty over US-Iran talks and as a landmark trial verdict opened social media companies to greater liability for what happens on their platforms.

On Wednesday, a Los Angeles jury found Alphabet’s (GOOG, GOOGL) YouTube and Meta (META) liable for harm done to a young user. The jurors ordered the companies to pay the lead plaintiff $3 million in compensatory damages in the first-of-its-kind case.

Meanwhile, investors continue to evaluate Nvidia’s AI offerings after the company unveiled new AI chips and an agentic AI platform at its developer conference last week.

On Tuesday, Arm (ARM) announced its own entrance into the AI chip market with a new data center chip and server rack, sending the stock more than 12% higher in extended trading.

In other tech news, Elon Musk’s SpaceX is nearing an IPO, SK Hynix (000660.KS) said it would place an $8 billion order for ASML’s cutting-edge tools, and Apple (AAPL) CEO Tim Cook said the company is seeing strong enthusiasm for its new, low-cost MacBook.

Read more about today's market action.

OpenClaw is an AI agent platform developed by Peter Steinberger in November 2025, designed to give AI models the ability to do things in the real world. Steinberger originally called it Clawdbot, a take on Anthropic’s own Claude AI model, but changed its name to Moltbot before ultimately landing on OpenClaw.

For a platform that’s just a few months old and has had three names, OpenClaw has quickly skyrocketed in popularity among AI boosters, developers, and enthusiasts.

In February, OpenAI (OPAI.PVT) snatched up Steinberger, hiring him to help develop the company’s personal agents. Nvidia (NVDA) had Steinberger on its GTC pre-show panel on March 16, and the popular lobster-claw logo is turning up as some not-so-stylish headgear fans wear at tech meetups around the world.

If you’re not up on the artificial intelligence race, though, everything you’ve just read might as well be in a different language. If you find yourself asking what the hype is all about, or what in the world I’m talking about, I’ve got you covered.

Read more here

Memory stocks sank early Thursday, the latest development in what’s been an interesting week for the AI trade.

Bloomberg attributed a sell-off in memory names like SK Hynix, Micron (MU), SanDisk (SNDK), and Western Digital (WDC) to research published by Google earlier this week that appeared to lower demand requirements for AI models.

Google researchers unveiled a tool called TurboQuant, “a compression algorithm that optimally addresses the challenge of memory overhead in vector quantization.”

When you interact with an LLM, part of that response — in some cases, most or all of it — is coming from a memory cache that houses previous interactions with the model. In other words, every interaction with an LLM does not start from zero.

TurboQuant is aimed at lowering the memory intensity of storing these responses. A shortage of memory chips has been one of the key bottlenecks in AI development flagged by the industry over the last few months.

Thursday’s decline in memory stocks also cools off one of the hottest AI trades this year and is the latest pocket of stock market weakness tagged to new technological advances in AI.

Software stocks have also continued their sell-off this week, with this decline attributed both to new agentic tools released by Amazon and advances from Anthropic that will allow Claude to complete a wider range of tasks on a user’s computer.

Snap (SNAP) stock fell on Thursday morning after EU regulators opened an investigation into the social media platform Snapchat, warning that it wasn’t doing enough to prevent child grooming and illegal goods sales.

The EU is looking into whether Snapchat violated the Digital Services Act, which requires large platforms to manage illegal and harmful content or face fines of up to 6% of global annual sales.

"From grooming and exposure to illegal ‌products to account settings that ⁠undermine minors' safety, Snapchat appears to have overlooked that the Digital Services Act demands high safety standards for all ⁠users," EU tech chief Henna Virkkunen said in a statement, according to Reuters.

Snapchat said it was cooperating with the Commission and that it continuously meets the Digital Services Act’s standards.

Read more here from Reuters.

OpenAI is focusing on focusing.

And the latest move from the company to pare its side projects will see its planned erotic chatbot paused indefinitely, according to The Financial Times.

The FT reports that OpenAI had already delayed the model “amid internal discussions over whether to scrap the model entirely, according to multiple people familiar.”

Earlier this week, OpenAI shut down Sora, its AI video creation app as the company continues to streamline its focus following its most recent funding round — which valued the startup at $840 billion — and ahead of an IPO that could come later this year.

Read the full report here.

The jury in a landmark lawsuit against social media companies ruled in favor of the plaintiffs, holding Meta (META) and YouTube (GOOG, GOOGL) liable for $3 million in damages on Wednesday. The trial will now move to the damages phase.

The jury in the case said that both Meta and YouTube knew the designs of their platforms were dangerous, that users wouldn't realize the danger, and that the companies failed to warn of the danger when a reasonable platform would have.

What makes the Los Angeles case unique is that, rather than trying to persuade the jury that the content on Meta and YouTube was harmful, the plaintiff's attorneys framed the case around the actual design of the social media platforms.

That allowed them to circumvent arguments related to Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which protects companies from liability for what their users post on their platforms.

Meta and YouTube disputed the claims during the trial, saying that they worked for years to improve the safety of their products.

Read more here.

Shares of Arm (ARM) rocketed more than 15% higher in early trading on Wednesday after the company unveiled its first production data center processor: the Arm AGI CPU (central processing unit).

Arm has traditionally licensed its intellectual property to other companies to develop their own chips, including Apple (AAPL) and Nvidia (NVDA), which uses Arm’s capabilities in its Grace and Vera CPUs.

Arm said it co-developed the AGI CPU with Meta (META), which is deploying them alongside its own custom chips inside its data centers.

Beyond Meta, Arm said it’s also working with Cerebras, Cloudflare (NET), F5 (FFIV), OpenAI (OPAI.PVT), Positron (POSC), Rebellions, SAP (SAP), and SK Telecom (SKM), which will use the chip for agentic AI applications, among others.

Despite Wall Street’s exuberance for Arm’s new chip, BofA Global Research analyst Vivek Arya pointed out in a note to investors that the company is far from the only CPU game in town.

“We highlight the CPU market is getting very crowded. Incumbents in both x86 and ARM have much wider breadths of portfolio and established software/ecosystem, catering to enterprise/telco customers,” he wrote.

Meta Platforms is expected to lay off “a few hundred people” on Wednesday, The Information reported Wednesday morning, citing two people familiar with the matter.

The outlet said layoffs were likely to hit its Reality Labs unit, sales, recruiting, and social media teams.

The report comes after Reuters said earlier this month Meta was exploring deep staff cuts that could result in 20% of the company being shown the door.

Late Tuesday, Meta also rejiggered stock incentive plans for a handful of its top executives, which could see them earn nine-figure payouts if the company’s market capitalization climbs above $9 trillion in the years ahead.

Read The Information’s full report here.

The biggest initial public offering on record could officially kick off its process this week.

The Information reported late Tuesday that SpaceX is preparing to file for its IPO with the SEC as soon as this week.

The rocket company led by Elon Musk is expected to raise up to $75 billion in its offering; the company was most recently valued at $1.25 trillion.

For years, Arm (ARM) has played a key role in the development of processors for everything from the iPhone to data center chips. But now the company is expanding its reach with the debut of its first production data center processor: the Arm AGI CPU (central processing unit).

Arm has traditionally licensed its intellectual property to other companies to develop their own chips, including Nvidia (NVDA), which uses Arm’s capabilities in its Grace and Vera CPUs.

Graphics processing units, or GPUs, have dominated data centers thanks to their ability to train and run AI models. But as running those models becomes a more common use case than training and as the industry transitions toward agentic applications — AI that can perform tasks on your behalf — CPUs are becoming more important.

That provides Arm with the opportunity to launch its own processor. The company isn’t just debuting a chip, though; it’s also unveiling a server rack to run them at scale.

And while X86-based chips like those from Intel (INTC) and Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) generally dominate data centers, Arm said its CPU delivers twice the performance per rack compared to those other platforms.

Read more here.

OpenAI is making a push to focus on its core business.

It appears a casualty of that push will be its video creation tool, Sora.

The Wall Street Journal reports:

It was only last December that Disney and OpenAI announced a deal allowing users to create videos using Disney IP. The deal also saw Disney make a $1 billion equity investment in OpenAI. The Information reported Tuesday that Disney won’t make this investment as a result of OpenAI’s Sora pivot.

That deal came a few months after OpenAI completed a share sale that valued the company at at $500 billion. The AI giant was valued at $730 billion in late February following a funding round that raised $110 billion.

The global smartphone market is set to take a hit in 2026, but Apple (AAPL) stands to benefit from the pain, according to a Morgan Stanley AlphaWise smartphone survey.

Global smartphone shipments will decline 13% year over year in 2026 and recover slightly to a 3% year-over-year improvement in 2027. That works out to 1.1 billion and 1.14 billion units, respectively.

Morgan Stanley (MS) previously expected shipments of 1.3 billion in 2026 and 1.31 billion in 2027.

The survey, which polled 2,000 participants over 18 in the US and China and about 1,500 in the UK and Germany, indicates that while upgrade rates are expected to improve in both the US and China next year, Apple is the only one of the major smartphone brands that is projected to see a positive, and improving, year-over-year net switching rate.

“Among prospective US smartphone upgraders, advanced features and upgrade eligibility are the two reasons where Apple leads peers,” Morgan Stanley analyst Erik Woodring wrote in an investor note.

“Among prospective China smartphone brand switchers, better overall device quality is the #1 reason why smartphone owners in China are switching to the iPhone,” he added.

Respondents were especially interested in Apple’s long-rumored foldable iPhone, which Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman says the company will launch later this fall, with 27% of current iPhone owners saying they had a strong interest in the phone.

Read more here.

Yahoo Finance’s Francisco Velasquez reports:

Read more here.

There’s a bright spot in Tesla’s (TSLA) core auto sales, with a slight reversal of fortune in greater Europe.

According to the European Automobile Manufacturers' Association (ACEA), Tesla electric vehicle registrations (a proxy for sales) in Europe rose to 17,664 units in February, an 11.8% gain compared to a year ago. In January, sales dipped 17%, the last month of a losing streak that had been ongoing since December 2024.

While this February saw a sales jump, it came against a weak February in 2025. Last year, Tesla’s European sales tumbled 27%.

Tesla’s recent losing streak occurred against the backdrop of rising EV sales in the greater Europe region. Total EV registrations in the region, which includes the UK and the European Free Trade Association, rose 15.8% in February, with overall registrations regardless of powertrain up only 1.7%.

While EV sales have slumped somewhat in the US, cheap EVs and hybrids are flourishing in the EU, especially from Chinese automakers like BYD and Li Auto, as buyers across the pond embrace Asian imports.

Read more here.

The race to make increasingly advanced AI agents is heating up thanks to the release of OpenClaw in November, and now Anthropic (ANTH.PVT) is joining the action.

The company announced its new capability for its Claude Cowork productivity tool and Claude Code coding feature, giving both the ability to do things like access different apps, point and click with your mouse, type, and browse the web and your files.

Anthropic is also careful to point out that it’s putting certain safeguards into place to prevent malicious actors from exploiting its advanced agentic abilities, a big fear with these kinds of agents.

High-powered AI features like Anthropic’s aren’t entirely new, but they gained increased traction with the debut of OpenClaw, which allows users to run custom AI agents on their desktop systems, giving the bots control over their data and programs.

Cybersecurity experts have raised alarms that OpenClaw could be a security nightmare, but companies like Nvidia (NVDA) and Cisco (CSCO) are jumping on board, releasing their own apps to put guardrails around the agents.

In February, an AI safety and alignment worker in Meta’s Superintelligence Lab posted on X that her own OpenClaw agent bulk deleted her email without her permission.

Chipmaker SK Hynix (000660.KS) plans to purchase 11.95 trillion won ($7.97 billion) worth of ‌ASML's (ASML) advanced EUV lithography tools in ‌the largest single order for ASML of its kind.

Reuters reports:

Read more here.

Amazon (AMZN) said on Monday that Amazon Web Services has been "disrupted" in Bahrain amid the current conflict in the Middle East.

The disruption is due to drone ​activity in the area, an Amazon spokesperson told Reuters.

From Reuters:

Read more here.

OpenClaw, the popular AI agent platform, is a massive hit among the techy set. Developed by Peter Steinberger, who has since joined OpenAI (OPAI.PVT), OpenClaw allows users to set up their own AI agent that can run on their computers, performing tasks ranging from checking email and replying to messages to managing system files.

And while those capabilities are impressive, they’re also a potential security nightmare. That’s because you’re giving an AI model the ability to control your computer.

And while that’s great when it works, it can lead to major issues, whether that’s permanently deleting important emails or entire programs from your system.

And that becomes an even bigger problem for companies testing OpenClaw on their enterprise devices.

To that end, Cisco (CSCO), on Monday, showed off a number of new security offerings designed to protect against rogue AI agents.

Read more here.

Apple (AAPL) on Monday said it will host its annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) on June 8 at its headquarters in Cupertino, Calif.

The company uses the yearly event to showcase the latest software updates to its iOS and macOS lines, among others. This year will be particularly important, as Apple is widely expected to provide more information about its planned AI overhaul of Siri, which has run into repeated delays, as well as deeper insights into its broader AI strategy.

The iPhone maker’s Apple Intelligence platform has fallen behind Google’s and Samsung’s offerings, driving Apple to enter into an agreement with Google to use that company’s Gemini AI models to power its own services.

Despite that, Apple posted record revenue in its most recent quarter on all-time high iPhone sales, showing that consumers aren’t penalizing Apple for its AI shortfalls.

CEO Tim Cook did, however, warn that the global memory shortage caused by the ongoing AI data center build-out will likely hurt Apple’s margins in the coming quarters.

The company’s stock price is down more than 7.7% year to date but up nearly 15% over the last 12 months.

Over the weekend, Tesla (TSLA) and SpaceX (SPAX.PVT) CEO Elon Musk unveiled what might be his grandest vision for his companies' future: a massive chip factory located in Austin, Texas.

Tesla stock rose 3% on Monday.

Read more here.

Yahoo Finance’s Pras Subramanian reports:

Alphabet’s (GOOG, GOOGL) drone delivery company Wing will begin shipping products through the air to homes around San Francisco in the near future.

Reuters reports:

Read more here.