Tech stocks today: Apple unveils low-cost MacBook Neo, CoreWeave inks deal with Perplexity – Yahoo Finance

The AI explosion has meant that GPUs (graphic processing units) have dominated data centers across the world. Hyperscalers, neoclouds, and everyone in between have been splashing billions to get their hands on the high-end chips to train and run their AI models.

That left the humble CPU (computer processing unit), which powers virtually everything else in data centers, and thus the applications and services you use every day, out in the cold.

But that’s starting to change. Earlier this month, Meta (META) and Nvidia (NVDA) announced an expanded deal that will see Nvidia provide the social media company with the largest deployment of its Grace CPU-only servers to date.

And just last week, AMD (AMD) announced its own deal with Meta, which includes servers running the company’s Venice and next-generation Verano CPUs.

It might sound counterintuitive for CPUs to grab some of the spotlight amid the global AI buildout, but in a world where AI inference and agentic AI are becoming increasingly important, CPUs, it turns out, are primed to shine.

“It’s not a zero-sum game,” explained Dan McNamara, senior vice president and GM of compute and enterprise AI at AMD.

“CPUs are growing, but GPUs are not slowing down, because there’s more and more workloads.”

Read the full story here.

Bank of America reinstated coverage of Tesla (TSLA) with a Buy rating and bullish outlook on the company’s robotaxi and autonomous efforts.

In a long and wide-ranging note, analyst Alexander Perry gave Tesla a $460 price target, based on the investment bank’s sum-of-the-parts analysis. Perry picked up Tesla and BofA’s auto coverage after longtime analyst John Murphy left the firm.

Tesla shares rose 3% in early trade.

“We view [Tesla] as the current leader in consumer autonomy,” Perry wrote. “We expect TSLA to quickly become a leader in robotaxi services, given its ability to scale more profitably than competitors.”

Perry predicts autonomous vehicles and robotaxis will usher in the next era of mobility and be the “most significant change agent” in the Auto 2.0 landscape, with Tesla at the forefront.

Read more here.

Apple (AAPL) unveiled its MacBook Neo, the company’s long-rumored foray into the low-cost computer market, at an event in New York on Wednesday.

Starting at $599, the Neo comes in four colors, including a splashy yellow-green Citrus, and is designed to appeal to consumers, schools, and businesses looking for a more affordable option than Apple’s recently refreshed $1,099 MacBook Air.

The Neo features a 13-inch screen, a bit smaller than the standard MacBook Air’s 13.6-inch display, and runs on Apple’s A18 Pro processor, similar to the chip that powers the company’s iPhone 16 Pro and 16 Pro Max.

The Neo also comes with 256GB of storage, with an option for up to 512GB for an extra $100. That upgrade also gets you Apple’s Touch ID fingerprint sensor to unlock the laptop and make payments via Apple Pay.

The Neo should serve as a solid alternative for schools, especially those that typically provide students with Chromebooks and, in some cases, iPads.

“This is one of the most important announcements for Apple in the Mac product line and represents a shift in the history of the Mac. Apple has always positioned the MacBook as a premium computing product, with entry prices typically starting near or above $999,” International Data Corporation VP of client devices Francisco Jeronimo said.

Read the full story here.

Neocloud company CoreWeave (CRWV) says it has entered into a multi-year agreement with Perplexity (PEAI.PVT), that will see the AI search company run its inference workloads on CoreWeave’s cloud hardware.

CoreWeave builds data centers that run Nvidia (NVDA) chips, which other companies then rent to power their AI services. Under the terms of the agreement, Perplexity will use CoreWeave’s Nvidia GB200 servers to run its AI offerings.

CoreWeave will, in turn, deploy Perplexity’s Enterprise Max software internally.

CoreWeave is closely linked to Nvidia, which has invested billions in the company and become its second-largest shareholder. That’s led to concerns about so-called circular investing, in which one company invests in another only for the second company to turn around and purchase goods from the first.

The AI industry has faced a number of similar moves across a number of companies, including with Nvidia rival AMD (AMD).

CoreWeave has also faced criticism over its massive spending plans and debt load as it continues its AI buildout. Shares of the company have fallen more than 19% over the last six months, despite climbing 85% over the last year.

Tue, March 3, 2026 at 11:39 PM UTC

Anthropic’s Claude became the most downloaded free app on both Apple’s App Store and Google’s Play Store on Tuesday, following the company’s showdown with the Department of Defense (DOD) last week.

Anthropic (ANTH.PVT) and the DOD have been sparring over the company’s insistence that the agency not use its Claude models for the mass surveillance of Americans or to develop fully autonomous weapons. On Friday, President Trump ordered all of the federal government to phase out Anthropic’s technology over the next six months labeling the company a supply chain threat.

That could force firms that work with the government and use Anthropic’s models to stop using the company’s technology, though Anthropic says that only applies to those firms’ government work and not to their private businesses.

But the blowup has seemingly helped Anthropic’s public relations, with the company saying that Monday was its largest single day for sign-ups ever.

Read the full story here.

Tue, March 3, 2026 at 3:45 PM UTC

Apple (AAPL) continued its March product rollout on Tuesday with the debut of its latest MacBook Air and MacBook Pro, alongside more powerful M5 Pro and M5 Max chips.

The MacBook Air, Apple’s volume seller, now starts at $1,099, a $100 price jump over last year’s model, and comes with the company’s M5 processor and more storage, 512GB rather than 256GB.

In addition to the Air, Apple announced its M5 Pro and M5 Max processors. The company says the chips use what Apple calls its Fusion Architecture, which combines two dies into a single processor. Both the M5 Pro and M5 Max can be outfitted with 18-core CPUs that include 6 “super cores” and 12 new “performance cores.”

Both processors slot into Apple’s new MacBook Pro 14-inch and MacBook Pro 16-inch. Apple is leaning into the laptops’ AI capabilities, saying that the MacBook Pro with the M5 Pro chip gets up to 6.9x faster LLM prompt processing than the M1 Pro, while the MacBook Pro with the M5 Max offers 8x faster AI image generation than the MacBook Pro with the M1 Max.

As with the Air, Apple is increasing the MacBook Pro’s base storage from 512GB in the M4 Pro the 1TB for the M5 Pro. The M5 Max model now gets 2TB, compared to the M4 Max’s 1TB.

The Pros will cost you, though. The base MacBook Pro 14-inch with a standard M5 chip starts at $1,699, up from $1,599 last year.

Jump to the M5 Pro, and you’ll pay $2,199. The M5 Max version, meanwhile, starts at $3,599.

Opt for a MacBook Pro 16-inch with all the bells and whistles, and you’ll end up paying $7,349.

Read the full story here.

Here’s another reason OpenAI (OPAI.PVT) may have felt compelled to reassure its users about its Department of Defense contract.

Data from Sensor Tower, reported by TechCrunch, found that uninstalls of ChatGPT’s mobile app jumped 295% in the US on Saturday, when news of the AI startup’s deal with the Department of Defense emerged.

ChatGPT’s typical daily uninstall rate for the past 30 days has been around 9%, Sensor Tower said.

Meanwhile, US downloads for Anthropic’s (ANTH.PVT) Claude app rose 37% on Friday and 51% on Saturday after the OpenAI rival rejected a deal with the Pentagon and was labeled a “supply chain risk” by the government.

Read more here from TechCrunch.

From Bloomberg:

Read more here.

OpenAI (OPAI.PVT) CEO Sam Altman said the ChatGPT-maker is working with the US Department of Defense to amend the agreement the two parties reached over the weekend.

“We have been working with the DoW [Department of ‌War] to ⁠make some additions in our agreement to make our ⁠principles very clear,” Altman wrote in a post on ​X late on Monday.

Altman outlined two additions to the contract intended to make explicit the startup’s commitment not to surveil Americans.

The first addition says “the AI system shall not be intentionally used for domestic surveillance of U.S. persons and nationals,” while the second states, “for the avoidance of doubt,” that the DOD acknowledges that it is prohibited from deliberately tracking or monitoring US persons or nationals, including through commercially acquired information.”

The contract modifications came after OpenAI received some backlash for striking a deal with the Pentagon, just as DOD’s deal with Anthropic (ANTH.PVT) fell apart. Anthropic was also pushing for strong guardrails around using AI models for surveillance and autonomous weapons.

“We were genuinely trying to de-escalate things and avoid a much worse outcome, but I think it just looked opportunistic and sloppy,” Altman admitted.

Mon, March 2, 2026 at 4:40 PM UTC

Chinese electric vehicle maker BYD (1211.HK) stock jumped 4% on Monday after the company said it would reveal “disruptive technology” at an event later this week. This comes after BYD said global sales tumbled in February.

BYD announced that the upcoming event will occur at its Shenzhen HQ via an official WeChat post, though no other details were provided, according to Chinese EV blog CnEVPost.

Rumors suggest BYD’s new details could be linked to a large-scale deployment of megawatt-level flash-charging infrastructure.

The disruptive technology teaser comes after BYD reported a big sales drop for the month of February.

On Sunday, BYD said new energy vehicle sales, which include hybrids and EVs, fell to 190,190 units, down 41% compared to a year ago, according to CnEVPost. February’s total is also down 9.5% sequentially compared to a year ago.

Read more about BYD’s charging efforts and sales here.

Mon, March 2, 2026 at 3:32 PM UTC

Apple (AAPL) on Monday announced its iPhone 17e, the company’s latest entry-level smartphone, as well as two new iPad Air, as part of an expected three-day schedule of new product releases.

The 17e is Apple’s most recent attempt to attract customers looking for a relatively inexpensive iPhone with a starting price of $599 with 256GB of storage. That’s $200 less than the base iPhone 17, which costs $799. It’s also a step up in memory from last year’s iPhone 16e, which also started at $599, but came with just 128GB of space.

There are a few trade-offs that come with the 17e, though. You’ll get a smaller 6.1-inch display versus the 6.3-inch panel found on the iPhone 17, and rather than Apple’s Dynamic Island at the top of the screen that houses the phone’s front-facing camera and can display information like sports scores and the status of your Uber, the 17e gets the old camera cutout.

The iPhone 17e also only gets a single rear camera, instead of two like the iPhone 17.

In addition to the iPhone 17e, Apple also debuted its latest iPad Air running on the company’s M4 processor, up from the M3 chip in the prior generation.

Available for $599 with an 11-inch screen or $799 for a 13-inch panel, the iPad Air also gets Apple’s N1 and C1X wireless modem and cellular chips.

Apple says the latest Airs are up to 30% faster than the iPad Air with an M3 processor and 2.3x faster than the model with an M1 chip.

Read more here.

On Saturday, OpenAI (OPAI.PVT) appeared to stage a major coup against rival Anthropic (ANTH.PVT) by striking a deal with the Defense Department that came just after the Trump administration effectively severed all US government ties with Anthropic over a dispute about AI use safeguards.

OpenAI said it managed to secure a deal with protections similar to those Anthropic sought, stating in a press release, “We think our agreement has more guardrails than any previous agreement for classified AI deployments, including Anthropic’s.”

Those red lines, according to OpenAI, are no use of OpenAI technology for mass domestic surveillance, no use of OpenAI technology to direct autonomous weapons systems, and no use of OpenAI technology for high-stakes automated decisions.

“We retain full discretion over our safety stack, we deploy via cloud, cleared OpenAI personnel are in the loop, and we have strong contractual protections,” OpenAI said. “This is all in addition to the strong existing protections in U.S. law.”

The deal raised several questions about how OpenAI was able to come to a deal that included these guardrails when Anthropic could not, whether pressure from the Trump administration played a role in the agreement, and whether the deal comprehensively addresses the central AI safety risks.

Nvidia (NVDA) said it struck two strategic partnerships with photonics companies Coherent (COHR) and Lumentum (LITE) on Monday in an effort to develop and secure access to state-of-the-art optics technology for the next generation of AI data centers.

Nvidia agreed to invest $2 billion in Coherent to support the company’s future operations as it expands its US manufacturing capabilities. As part of the agreement, Nvidia made a multibillion-dollar purchase commitment and received rights to access advanced laser and optical networking products in the future.

The Santa Clara-based company also announced a similar partnership with Lumentum, also investing $2 billion to support research & development and a new fab based in the US.

Nvidia has been rapidly scaling up its networking business and is betting that the relatively smaller photonics industry can help it make large-scale AI networks more energy efficient, reducing a bottleneck on artificial intelligence growth.

“Computing has fundamentally changed,” Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said in a statement. “In the age of AI, software runs on intelligence with tokens generated in real time by AI factories for every interaction and every context. With Coherent, NVIDIA is pioneering next-generation silicon photonics to enable AI infrastructure at unprecedented scale, speed and energy efficiency.”

Nvidia stock fell 1.2% in premarket trading following the announcement, while Coherent shares jumped around 8% and Lumentum stock also surged over 7%.

Fri, February 27, 2026 at 9:24 PM UTC

President Trump on Friday ordered the federal government to cease all use of Anthropic’s technology, amid the ongoing standoff between the AI company and the Department of Defense (DOD).

In a post on Truth Social, Trump wrote, “I am directing EVERY Federal Agency in the United States Government to IMMEDIATELY CEASE all use of Anthropic’s technology. We don’t need it, we don’t want it, and will not do business with them again!”

Anthropic is seeking to put guardrails in place that would prevent the DOD from using its models for the mass surveillance of Americans or to develop fully autonomous weapons. The DOD has pushed back, saying it should have access to Anthropic’s technology for all lawful purposes.

In his post, Trump said there will be a six-month phase-down period for agencies such as the DOD that use Anthropic’s products. He also threatened that if the company doesn’t “get their act together, and be helpful” during the phase-out period, he will “use the Full Power of the Presidency to make them comply, with major civil and criminal consequences to follow.”

Read the full story here.

Fri, February 27, 2026 at 8:55 PM UTC

SpaceX (SPAX.PVT) is looking at confidentially filing paperwork for an initial public offering as early as next month, according to Bloomberg.

The move to file with the SEC in March would keep Elon Musk’s rocketry company on track for a June offering, ahead of other potential mega-IPOs this year from frontier AI developers OpenAI (OPAI.PVT) and Anthropic (ANTH.PVT).

After acquiring Musk’s xAI company in February, SpaceX is now valued at $1.25 trillion. Through the IPO process, the company may look for a valuation of more than $1.75 trillion. Such an offering would immediately place SpaceX among the “Magnificent Seven” and other Big Tech giants as among the largest companies in the world.

The SpaceX IPO would raise as much as $50 billion, outstripping Saudi Aramco’s record $29 billion IPO, according to Bloomberg.

In December, Bloomberg reported that SpaceX had told employees the company was entering the regulatory “quiet period” required ahead of a public offering, and that the IPO would be aimed at funding an “insane flight rate” for its developmental Starship rocket, a base on the moon, and data centers in space.

Microsoft (MSFT) and OpenAI (OPAI.PVT) jointly reaffirmed that their partnership hasn’t changed despite the ChatGPT maker’s new agreement with Amazon (AMZN).

“The partnership remains strong and central,” a statement on the Microsoft blog read. “Microsoft and OpenAI continue to work closely across research, engineering, and product development, building on years of deep collaboration and shared success.”

The companies reasserted that their IP relationship, commercial and revenue-sharing relationship, and AGI processes remain unchanged.

Azure remains the exclusive cloud provider for stateless OpenAI APIs, Microsoft said, following Amazon’s announcement on Friday that it will be the exclusive third-party cloud distribution provider for OpenAI Frontier.

The clarification was intended to reassure Microsoft shareholders and enterprise customers of the partnership as OpenAI’s complicated web of investors and deals expands.

Fri, February 27, 2026 at 3:13 PM UTC

OpenAI is entering the fray. In a note to employees, CEO Sam Altman said the company is working toward establishing a contract with the Department of Defense that would give the DOD access to its AI models, according to The Wall Street Journal.

The catch? Altman says he wants to institute the same guardrails that have put the department and its rival Anthropic at loggerheads: no using models for mass surveillance of Americans and no using them to develop fully autonomous weapons.

The news comes just hours before a 5:01 p.m. ET deadline set by the DOD for Anthropic to agree to allow the Pentagon to use its models as it sees fit or face the consequences. The department has said it will either label Anthropic a supply chain threat, which would force vendors that work with the DOD to stop using its models, or institute the Defense Production Act, which would force Anthropic to give the Pentagon full access to its models.

Thursday evening, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei wrote in a blog post that while the company is still working to negotiate with the DOD, he and his company “cannot in good conscience accede to their request.”

OpenAI (OPAI.PVT) said on Friday that it has received $110 billion in new investments, including $30 billion from SoftBank (SFTBY), $30 billion from Nvidia (NVDA), and $50 billion from Amazon (AMZN), to help scale its artificial intelligence products.

As part of the announcement, OpenAI and Amazon announced a strategic partnership to co-create a system for AWS customers to build generative AI applications and agents using OpenAI models. AWS will be the exclusive third-party cloud distribution provider for OpenAI Frontier, Amazon said in a statement.

OpenAI also expanded its partnership with Nvidia, receiving 3 gigawatts of dedicated inference capacity and 2 gigawatts of training on Vera Rubin systems. Nvidia and Amazon stocks fell in premarket trading.

The close of the fundraising round valued OpenAI at $730 billion pre-money, a good step up from the $500 billion valuation reported in October that demonstrates how high expectations have run for the AI startup’s technology.

Markets have become jumpy in recent weeks as spending on AI technology has continued to ramp up, companies have entered complex webs of financing with one another, and competition among OpenAI, Anthropic, and Alphabet has increased.