Breakaway Brokers

On Monday, OpenAI announced $40 billion in new financing, the largest funding round in history, and one that nearly doubled the artificial intelligence company’s valuation to $300 billion.

Life’s challenges often force us to become more present, to experience each moment fully. In doing so, I discovered the importance of celebrating small victories – not just the major milestones, but the everyday wins that mark progress.

I suspect many people yawned when the popular online brokerage Robinhood Markets Inc. announced it will offer sports and other prediction market derivatives, starting with betting on the NCAA March Madness basketball games.

Elon Musk’s social network X has raised close to $1 billion in new equity from investors, according to people with knowledge of the matter — a deal that gives the company a valuation in line with when Musk took it private in 2022.

I’ve spent much of my career coaching and providing learning opportunities for those professionals who want to improve. This week I had an experience that moved me to write a column about the difficulty in opening one’s self up to being willing to be coached, and of making behavioral change.

Microsoft Corp., the biggest backer of Sam Altman’s OpenAI, and BlackRock Inc., which has an executive on the artificial intelligence startup’s board, are joining forces with one of its chief rivals.

Cathie Wood’s Ark Investment Management LLC is cutting its stake in Meta Platforms Inc. for the first time in around a year, the latest sign of a downturn in fortunes for big US tech stocks.

Google parent Alphabet Inc. agreed to acquire cybersecurity firm Wiz Inc. for $32 billion in cash, reaching a deal less than a year after initial negotiations fell apart because the cloud-computing startup wanted to stay independent.

When clients are scared, you want to be there for them and respond to their concerns. However, if you don’t pause from time-to-time to make sure you are responding in the most effective ways, you will find yourself continually frustrated and even possibly resentful of the interruption.

I recommend you hold what I call an “obstacles session.” This is when you ideally have a third party in to ask your team what success would look like to them, and what obstacles are getting in the way of achieving this success.

Many major stocks connected to artificial intelligence have lost their luster of late, but perhaps none more so than Microsoft Corp.

The Chinese artificial intelligence startup that rocked global markets earlier this year with its low-cost and high-performance AI models has outlined a potential path to major profitability.

Tencent Holdings Ltd. became the latest tech company to unveil or enhance an AI model intended to eclipse DeepSeek, joining a spate of rollouts since the startup’s emergence energized the US-China technology race.

Investors hoping that Nvidia Corp.’s earnings would rejuvenate the artificial intelligence trade didn’t exactly get the report they wanted.

Nvidia Corp., the chipmaker at the center of an AI spending boom, delivered good-but-not-great quarterly numbers on Wednesday, drawing a muted response from investors accustomed to blowout results.

Nvidia Corp.’s earnings are set to dictate whether artificial intelligence can regain its status as the key driver behind Wall Street gains — or trigger more weakness after the Magnificent Seven group of technology stocks fell into correction territory.

Unfortunately, I hear stories about people unwilling to seek HR help for many reasons. It is a tragedy when this happens because good HR support can be the key to helping with so many things.

Donald Trump’s administration is sketching out tougher versions of US semiconductor curbs and pressuring key allies to escalate their restrictions on China’s chip industry, an early indication the new US president plans to expand efforts that began under Joe Biden to limit Beijing’s technological prowess.

At least three of Bytedance Ltd.’s major investors have marked up the TikTok-owner’s valuation to more than $400 billion, a sharp rebound for a Chinese social video leader that has been threatened with a US shutdown.

I have – painfully – learned one thing, in particular. Even if you can see what’s happening and could find the words to share your insights, if you have a leader that only wants to listen to an echo chamber, you aren’t going to get heard, no matter what you do.

Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence startup xAI debuted its updated Grok-3 model, showcasing a version of the chatbot technology to challenge OpenAI days after the billionaire’s unsolicited cash bid to buy the company was rejected.

DeepSeek may be that catalyst, forcing investors and technologists alike to question long-held assumptions and reevaluate the competitive landscape in real time.

A hedge fund startup that uses artificial intelligence to do work typically handled by analysts has outperformed the global stock market in its first six months while slashing research costs.

Nvidia Corp. investors have typically rushed to buy the stock on any dips. But the mood since the DeepSeek-driven rout has been different, signaling that fears of a slowdown in AI spending aren’t going away.

The AI flight is taking off, and DeepSeek is the final call for India to show up at the boarding gate. Since its private sector is too risk averse to back research projects with uncertain payoffs, the state will have to step up.

It’s not easy when someone doesn’t want to look at their own culpability in relationships. But you can only control what’s controllable, and we don’t control others, much as we endeavor to do so.

Startup investors including Alphabet Inc.’s Google and SoftBank Group Corp. are betting that quantum computing, often thought of as a fantastical science experiment, is getting closer to having sweeping real-world applications.

OpenAI Chief Executive Officer Sam Altman rebuffed Elon Musk’s $97.4 billion offer to take control of the artificial-intelligence startup for the second time in less than a day, accusing the world’s richest man of making the bid just to gain a competitive advantage.

At the start of this week, the question was whether the shock of China’s supercheap AI DeepSeek would compel Silicon Valley’s big artificial-intelligence companies to reduce their spending.

Investors are hungry for a piece of the US data centers powering the artificial intelligence boom, and a handful of initial public offerings expected in 2025 would feed that appetite.

I know that dealing with someone who is irrational is next to impossible. Trying to show them how much their approach hurts others only fuels the fire and gives them more righteousness.

Meta Platforms Inc. shares are on track for their longest streak of daily gains in almost a decade, with its latest earnings report adding to investor confidence about its strategy with artificial intelligence.

DeepSeek didn’t come out of nowhere. But it seemed to catch Silicon Valley and global investors by surprise this week, to the tune of billions of dollars in stock market value.

Concerns over Apple Inc.’s first-quarter results have met with 11th-hour optimism that it could eventually benefit from the same force that recently wreaked havoc on the tech sector.

A small band of Wall Street skeptics are moving to protect their credit portfolios against a market priced like nothing in the economy could possibly go wrong.

By now, almost everyone has heard about DeepSeek, the Chinese-made AI that has taught the US a thing or two about building cheaper artificial intelligence.

There are times in life when factors conspire to make it very difficult to be as productive as we need to – and want to – be. But even in the midst of these times it’s important to feel like you have some control and do the things that will keep you on track. Control the controllable.

If OpenAI LLC were a listed company, Monday would have been a very bad day for the stock.

Microsoft Corp. and OpenAI are investigating whether data output from OpenAI’s technology was obtained in an unauthorized manner by a group linked to Chinese artificial intelligence startup DeepSeek, according to people familiar with the matter.

Oaktree Capital Group LLC co-founder Howard Marks says investors who made a fortune in the era of easy money should not expect the same strategies to deliver such exceptional returns in the future.

DeepSeek, a Chinese artificial intelligence startup, has developed a model that can apparently answer questions as well as any chatbot in the US. It might even help answer a long-running question on Wall Street without being asked.

The S&P 500 Index plummeted as much as 2.3% on Monday over DeepSeek, a Chinese artificial intelligence startup that developed a model competitive with the US’s very best — and, supposedly, on the cheap.

Pacific Investment Management Co. is among asset managers looking at buying a portion of $3 billion of debt tied to Elon Musk’s buyout of X, according to people with knowledge of the matter.

As the Federal Reserve’s two-day meeting begins, investors have accepted that the central bank probably won’t be cutting interest rates this time.

Bosses at artificial intelligence companies aren’t worried about the end of the world or the start of government regulations. Their biggest worry is more mundane: finding enough electricity to keep servers running at data centers.

Exchange-traded fund investors who placed record bets on the US technology space last week are getting crushed Monday as anxiety over competition from a Chinese startup’s AI model is hitting tech stocks hard.

Treasuries rallied on Monday as investors flocked to the safety of US government bonds after equities slumped in a selloff driven by technology shares.

Chinese artificial intelligence startup DeepSeek’s latest AI model sparked a $1 trillion rout in US and European technology stocks, as investors questioned bloated valuations for some of America’s biggest companies.

Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies tumbled, following technology stocks lower, as the emergence of a new Chinese artificial-intelligence model triggered a global selloff in riskier assets.

In a small Texas city nearly 200 miles west of Dallas, the first data center associated with the $100 billion Stargate venture from OpenAI, SoftBank Group Corp. and Oracle Corp. is taking shape.

I’m devoting this column to reminders around change management and what to think about for the human element in the midst of change.