Author: arthursheikin@gmail.com

[ad_1] Evercore ISI is moving to the sidelines when it comes to FedEx . The investment firm downgraded the shipping and transportation stock to in line from outperform. Analyst Jonathan Chappell lowered his price target to $243 from $249, which signals 7% upside from Tuesday’s close. Chappell cited ongoing demand headwinds that could affect FedEx’s near-term earnings estimates for his downgrade. He also lowered his FedEx U.S. ground revenue forecast. “Meaningful deceleration in retail sales in August and further weakening in industrial production in August creates a weak starting point for FDX’s F2Q26 volumes — demand growth exited F1Q26 (August)…

[ad_1] As speed becomes the defining currency in an AI-driven software world, Blacksmith has raised another round led by Google Ventures — just four months after its seed — to accelerate how code gets shipped. The $10 million Series A closed in just 14 days, with Google Ventures doubling down after first backing Blacksmith’s $3.5 million seed in May. At the time, Alphabet’s VC arm bet on the size of the market and the founding team, which included veterans of Cockroach Labs, another GV portfolio company. But for this round, GV was swayed by results. Blacksmith, which offers a continuous…

[ad_1] As robots increasingly enter human spaces, robotics companies will need to think about safety differently than they did when robots were largely siloed from their human counterparts.   Sonair thinks its sensors can help robotics companies reach their safety goals — with a solution that is both better and cheaper than popular LIDAR technology.   The Oslo, Norway-based company built an ADAR (acoustic detection and ranging) sensor for robots that uses high frequency sound. These sensors send out ultrasound waves and capture how the sound echoes back. These signals give robots a three-dimensional view of their surroundings.  This data complements a…

[ad_1] Loop Capital is becoming very bullish on Netflix . The investment firm upgraded shares of the streaming giant to a buy rating from hold. Analyst Alan Gould accompanied the move by raising his price target to $1,350 per share from $1,150. Gould’s revised forecast implies another 12% upside for the stock, which has surged 35% this year. Gould pointed to a strong fundamental backdrop for Netflix, admitting that his prior downgrade of the stock was a mistake. NFLX YTD mountain NFLX YTD chart “We are upgrading our rating back to Buy based on exceptional 3Q engagement, a strong 4Q…

[ad_1] Critics aren’t convinced by OpenAI’s latest restructuring plan.OpenAI said last week it will hand its nonprofit over $100 billion in stock, or 20% of the company’s latest $500 billion valuation. It’s part of the artificial intelligence giant’s plan to restructure itself — it is technically a nonprofit, not a startup — so it can raise billions more from investors.Dozens of civil society groups, which want to ensure the benefits of AI are spread in the public interest, say they’re pressuring regulators to protect OpenAI’s nonprofit mission. They argue the nonprofit isn’t fully independent from OpenAI and that $100 billion…

[ad_1] The IPO window has cracked wide open this fall, and investors are piling in.Bankers say their order books are bigger than they’ve been in years as investors clamor for new listings. And those investors are getting their wish — last week marked the busiest period for IPOs since 2021, and ticket reseller StubHub, which had delayed its IPO after the market plunged in April, is set to begin trading on Wednesday.”Our order books are as large as we’ve seen, and we’re seeing participation across all global investor types,” Sumit Mukherjee, head of market intelligence for equity capital markets at…

[ad_1] My son was born in 2020, and the first two years of parenthood were lonely. My husband and I had been living in a small suburb in the Midwest since 2015, and we were far from our families. We had good jobs and minimal prospects closer to family, but still, we dreamed of being closer.We wanted a deeper connection with our families and more role models in our child’s life, more than we wanted to keep our secure employment and keep up with the status quo. Shaking up our stable financial lives to get back to the beautiful climate,…

[ad_1] Jean Frohling always wanted to help her three children buy places of their own. She and her husband, now in their mid-60s, saved for years in hopes of one day pulling their kids onto the property ladder. Eventually, hard work and foresight paid off: They gifted each of their first two children thousands of dollars to pad the down payments on their first homes.Then, about a year ago, their youngest daughter found a house she liked just outside Peoria, Illinois. The Frohlings figured their then 33-year-old daughter could probably afford the house on her own, but they decided to…

[ad_1] A startup founded by former Google DeepMind scientists to improve code with AI has raised $5 million.Hiverge, based in Cambridge, UK, has developed an AI technology to automate algorithm design for companies, with the aim of surpassing what human engineers can do alone.The startup was founded by Alhussein Fawzi and Bernardino Romera-Paredes, who worked on Google’s coding agent, AlphaEvolve, during its early stages, along with Hamza Fawzi, a University of Cambridge professor.”What really differentiates companies is the algorithms they use under the hood,” Alhussein Fawzi, the CEO of Hiverge, told Business Insider. “And so what we are doing at…

[ad_1] Gold has been on a record-setting blitz this year. But Chinese investors are increasingly turning their backs on the precious metal in favor of a surging domestic stock market.In August, China’s wholesale gold demand fell to just 85 metric tons — nine tons lower than in July. It was also the weakest August since 2010, according to the World Gold Council in a Tuesday report.”The August wholesale gold demand weakness mainly came from subdued bar and coin sales, as investors directed their attention to rallying equities,” wrote Ray Jia, the research head for China at World Gold Council.The retreat…