Stocks

Ford is recalling more than 741,000 SUVs and pickups, including 2018–2021 Expedition and Navigator, 2020–2021 Explorer and Aviator, and 2021 F-150 models, over a transmission defect that can allow a vehicle to roll away. The company has linked the issue to 24 reports of property damage and nine alleged injuries, including two reports involving emotional injuries. Dealers will install a software update and inspect and replace damaged transmission components at no cost, with interim owner letters expected to begin Aug. 3. Ford said a permanent repair is not expected to be available until April 2027.

Bloom Energy (BE) rose 13.97% to $345 in after-hours trading, bringing its gains to more than 24% on the day. The stock is up about 20.5% over the past month and roughly 269% year-to-date. The move followed partner Brookfield’s decision to raise its financing framework for AI infrastructure-related power projects from $5 billion to $25 billion, calling Bloom a key clean power provider for expanding AI compute.

In June 2026, the “Magnificent Seven” erased a combined $2.3 trillion in market value as investors fretted over massive AI-related capital spending. Microsoft fell 20% over the month, Nvidia slid about 13%, and Apple and Amazon each declined around 8%. Amazon, Microsoft, Alphabet and Meta have pledged hundreds of billions of dollars for AI chip purchases and data-center construction, with some of the spending financed through borrowing. Industrywide AI-linked capital expenditures are projected to reach $700 billion in 2026, up roughly 70% year over year, pushing the group’s 12-month forward free-cash-flow outlook well below 2024 levels.

Open USD officially launched on Tuesday, backed by more than 140 companies including Visa, Mastercard, Stripe, Shopify and Coinbase, and it says it offers zero-fee minting and redemptions along with shared reserve earnings. The debut has heightened concerns it could erode Circle’s USDC market share and put pressure on Circle’s business model. Circle Internet Group shares fell 16.3% to $63.57, marking a year-to-date low and forming a technical “death cross.” USDC’s market capitalization has declined to $73.7 billion from a year-to-date high of $80 billion.

Amazon’s Prime Day generated about $26.4 billion in U.S. online retail spending, up 9% year over year, with an estimated $7 billion to $8 billion of sales pulled into the second quarter from the third. On the cloud side, AWS implemented a roughly 20% price increase effective July 1 for certain GPU-heavy EC2 Capacity Blocks, after a prior 15% hike in January. Bank of America said the adjustment could add an estimated 1–2 percentage points to second-half AWS growth as large customers such as OpenAI and Anthropic expand commitments on AWS. The firm lifted its expectations for Amazon’s second-half growth and profitability, even as AMZN shares have been under near-term pressure.

Palantir said it has struck a strategic partnership with Nvidia to deploy open AI models inside classified and airgapped U.S. government systems by integrating Nvidia’s Blackwell Ultra GPUs and Nemotron open-source models with Palantir’s AIP and other platforms. The companies did not disclose specific agency customers or financial terms, describing the move as a productized follow-on from earlier demonstrations tied to Nvidia’s GTC event and the “Chain Reaction” program. Palantir reported Q1 revenue of $1.63 billion, up 85% year on year, including $687 million from the U.S. government, up 84%.

Technology shares led gains, with AI infrastructure-linked chipmakers including ASML, Lam Research, KLA, AMD, Marvell, Texas Instruments, Applied Materials, ARM and Intel each rising more than 1%. AI spending is expected to drive results, with forecasts pointing to AI infrastructure stocks contributing nearly 60% of the S&P 500’s Q2 earnings-per-share growth. Some crypto-exposed stocks such as MicroStrategy, Coinbase and Riot came under pressure as bitcoin fell.

SharonAI said it has closed a $1.6 billion private placement financing, including $900 million in Class A ordinary shares and prefunded warrants and $700 million in convertible notes. The company said it plans to use the proceeds to support a previously announced six-year compute collaboration with NVIDIA, including deployment of up to 40,000 Grace Blackwell GB300 GPUs in Australia. Goldman Sachs served as lead placement agent.

Micron’s latest fiscal Q3 results were strong, with revenue rising 4x year over year and gross margin hitting 84.6%, as AI-driven demand lifted high-bandwidth memory pricing. The analysis argues that Samsung, SK Hynix and Micron are simultaneously ramping investment toward roughly $130 billion in a single year, far above prior cycle peaks. It warns that this scale of capacity build-out could flip supply-demand dynamics later and pressure DRAM prices and profitability if AI infrastructure spending undershoots expectations.

Happy Forgings reported FY26 revenue of ₹1,546 crore, up 9.8%, with the EBITDA margin rising 157 bps to 30.4% and profit after tax up 23.6%. In Q4, revenue rose 20.4% to ₹424 crore and the EBITDA margin expanded to 31.5%. The board recommended a final dividend of ₹4 per equity share (face value ₹2) and also approved expanding a 35 MW solar project and an order book of ₹950 crores for new businesses. The company said the results reflect earnings ahead of expectations and support higher shareholder-return expectations.