← The Rundown
The Rundown
Meta Buys Millions of Nvidia Chips, Uber Invests $100M in Robotaxi Infrastructure
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Public.com presents the rundown, your daily market update in under 10 minutes. My name is Zadmani and today is Wednesday, February 18th. In today's episode, we'll tell you the moves that Berkshire hathaway made in Q4. We'll also break down the strategic partnership signed by Meta and Nvidia, then stick around to the end of the show to find out why CEOs are being replaced at a historically high rate. We got a great show for you today. Let's go. Markets kicked off the week with another choppy day of trading, but did squeeze out a win. The S P, Nasdaq both rose 0.1% snapping a four session losing streak. But under the surface software stocks continue to sell off. The ETF IGV, which tracks over 100 software companies, was down more than 2% yesterday. Apple was a bright spot though their stock was up more than 3% yesterday was we talked more about Apple and their upcoming event on yesterday's show, so go check that out if you missed it. I also want to point out Amazon, the Stock was only at 1% yesterday, but it did snap a nine day losing streak where the stock had dropped roughly 18%, wiping out nearly half a trillion dollars in market cap. So it's been a rough stretch for Amazon. Now speaking of Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway just dropped their latest 13F filing which showed that they slashed their Amazon stake by 75% in Q4. So pretty good timing over there. At Berkshire. They also trimmed Apple stake by 4%, but Apple is still their largest holding. The other notable thing to come out of the 13F was that Berkshire took a new position in the New York Times. So Berkshire is getting back into the news industry now zooming out and looking outside of stocks. Gold and silver cooled off on Tuesday. Gold dipped below $5,000 an ounce and silver also slid toward the $75, a range nearing its lowest levels of 2026. Overall, there just isn't much momentum in the market right now. There's confusion and volatility but but no rally. In fact, it's become a good market for stock pickers because the S and P is basically flat for the year. But there are some names that have been ripping. Now typically buying the index has been the smartest thing that you could do, but that's not the case this year. So it definitely makes for an interesting time following the markets. You know we're staying on top of all of it, so make sure you guys are subscribed to the podcast and tuning in every day to stay in The Loop let's run through some headlines, starting with Meta. Meta just signed a massive multi year deal to buy millions of Nvidia chips. This deal was announced yesterday and it covers Nvidia's current Blackwell GPUs. It also covers the next generation Ruben chips coming in 2027 and it also covers Nvidia's networking equipment to connect all these chips together. Now, financial terms weren't disclosed, but analysts say this deal is likely worth tens of billions of dollars. Meta is committed to spending up to $135 billion on AI this year alone, and up to $600 billion on data center infrastructure by 2028. There was one detail that could be Pretty significant Met first major tech company to deploy Nvidia's Grace CPUs as standalone chips in its data centers. Now a quick explainer here. The GPUs are the heavy lifters for training AI models. They do the intense number crunching, but CPUs handle everything else, like running databases, managing workloads, things like that. Nvidia has been trying to break into the CPU market for years and now having Meta deploy them at scale is a real vote of confidence. So investors like that from Nvidia, their stock was up more than 1% yesterday and it's up more than 2% this morning at the time of this recording. And overall think this deal could cool some anxiety about a slowdown in AI spending. Clearly, Meta has no plans to back off on their AI spending, despite the market's anxiety. And what's interesting to me is that Meta is trying to get their hands on as many AI chips as possible and not just using Nvidia. There was a report late last year that Meta was talking to Google to use their TPUs. Meta is also rumored to be working on their own chip, so they're pretty diversified when it comes to their AI chips. I do wonder though, if Meta used their deal with Google and the threat of making their own AI chip as a way to get leverage and a potential discount from Nvidia. Plus, Meta is buying in bulk, so hopefully Jensen gave Zuck a deal. Let's shift gears and talk about Uber, because the company is making a big bet on the future of robo taxis. Uber announced that it plans to invest more than $100 million to build fast charging hubs specifically for autonomous vehicles across the U.S. they're starting in the Bay Area, Los Angeles and Dallas, which is not a coincidence since those are the markets where Uber plans to launch public Robotaxi services later this year. You know, it's a strategic move for Uber and it tells you how they're approaching the emergence of robo taxis. Instead of developing their own self driving tech, they're partnering with more than 20 autonomous vehicle companies globally, including Waymo. And they're positioning themselves as the platform and operations layer. So having charging infrastructure is part of that vision. Uber says that owning the chargers will improve efficiency, keep vehicle vehicles on the road longer, and lower costs over time. Uber expects to offer autonomous rides through their partnerships in at least 10 cities by the end of 2026. But here's the thing. Wall street is skeptical of Uber strategy. Uber stock has dropped around 14% this year and it's off roughly 30% from its 52 week highs. Now there's real fear that as Waymo expands and Tesla's robo taxi ambitions ramp up, that Uber's core human driven ride hailing business will slowly become obsolete. In fact, every time that Tesla or Waymo drops positive robo taxi news, Uber stock tends to take a hit. But you know what, I kind of like the approach that Uber is taking. They're banking that self driving cars become a commodity and all these robo taxi companies are going to be on Uber's platform to get riders. So we'll see how it all plays out. But the next couple years could be pivotal for Uber. Let's talk about some stocks make in moves today. Caesar's Entertainment is up this morning after reporting a solid quarter that gave investors more confidence about the year ahead. Revenue came in at $2.9 billion, which was up 4% year over year and slightly ahead of estimates. Now, Caesars has been dealing with a slowdown in Vegas hotels for some time now, but the company noted that Vegas has improved in the fourth quarter. The company owns a variety of hotels across Vegas, including Planet Hollywood, Paris, Las Vegas, the Flamingo, Seattle, Caesar's palace, of course, and many more. So it's good to hear that Vegas is starting to bounce back. Looking ahead, Caesar's plans to pull back on capex spending in 2026, which means they'll have more free cash flow to pay down debt and buy back stock. Investors like the sound of that and the stock is up more than 5% this morning at the time of this recording. Now on the flip side, SanDisk shares are down after Western Digital announced plans to sell the entire remaining stake in the company. A quick backstory here. Sandis was spun off from Western Digital about a year since then. The stock has been on an absolute insane run, up more than 1500% since the spin off. It's up more than 100% in 2026 alone, making it the best performing stock in the S&P 500 this year. Western Digital still owns a stake in SanDisk from the spin off, but they're now cashing in and selling that stake for around $3.1 billion to pay down debt. Now Western Digital has a hard deadline to sell. If they don't unload their shares before February 21, they get hit with a major tax penalty. They're going to be selling a lot over the next few days, which is selling pressure on Sandis stock. That's pushed the stock down around 3% this morning. If you want to learn more about SanDisk, what they do and why the stock is up so much this year, go check out our deep dive that we did a couple weeks ago. Let's wrap the show with a fun fact. US companies are replacing CEOs at the highest rate in 15 years. About one in nine CEOs across the 1500 biggest publicly traded companies was replaced last year. That's the highest turnover rate since 2010, and things aren't slowing down this year. Disney, PayPal, HP all announced new CEOs. Walmart and Target also have new CEOs taken over. And what's interesting is that these new CEOs are getting younger and less experienced. The average incoming CEO last year was 54 years old, down from 56 the year before. And more than 80% of these CEOs have never ran a public company before. Now, initially that might seem like a red flag, but it kind of makes sense now. We're going through big technological changes right now with AI, and I think these boards are looking for newer, fresher ideas on how to move forward and involve the business model. So they're not looking at former CEOs that have 10, 15 years of experience. They want someone new coming in bringing fresh ideas. I also think that corporate boards and shareholders have less patience for underperforming CEOs now because the wrong person in charge can really set the company back, especially these days. So yeah, I wouldn't be surprised if we continue to see an increase in CEO turnover over the next couple of years. Well, all right guys, that's the rundown for today. Hope you guys enjoyed today's episode. If you did and you have like five extra seconds, consider giving us a five star rating on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, wherever you listen to your podcast. If you are listening on Spotify, don't forget to vote in today's Spotify poll. Leave us a comment on Spotify. All that engagement really does help us out and it helps other people find the show. Thank you guys so much for listening, watching and commenting. Shout out to Mike and Connor for all the work behind the scenes and we'll see you guys back here tomorrow.