A TON OF THINGS HAPPENED IN THE STOCK MARKET TODAY. Here's a full recap: 1. Alphabet $GOOGL delivered a massive Q2 2026, with revenue up 24% YoY to $119.8B and operating income rising 30% YoY to $40.8B. Search revenue grew 17% YoY to $63.3B, while Google Cloud had its fastest growth quarter ever, surging 82% YoY to $24.8B and producing $8.8B of operating income. Net income jumped 298% YoY to $112.1B. On the AI side, the Gemini app reached 950M monthly active users, and Gemini models are now processing 22B API tokens per minute. The one major drag was free cash flow, which turned negative at -$5.8B, marking Google’s first negative FCF quarter in years. Still, this was the company’s strongest revenue acceleration in 3 years, driven by explosive cloud growth and rising AI usage. 2. AMD $AMD and Anthropic have reportedly signed an AI server deal worth tens of billions of dollars, per WSJ. Under the agreement, Anthropic would buy up to 2GW of AMD’s latest-generation Instinct MI450 chips beginning in the first half of 2027. AMD also plans to invest up to $5B in Anthropic as deployment milestones are reached, and is reportedly discussing a potential financial backstop for Anthropic’s future data center leases. The deal marks another major push by AMD to deepen its AI infrastructure footprint and compete more directly with Nvidia. 3. President Trump said the U.S. will respond to any Iranian attack on ships in the Strait of Hormuz by bombing and destroying one Iranian bridge or power plant each time it happens. Trump said the policy applies “from this point forward” and could include infrastructure located near or inside Tehran. 4. Tesla $TSLA reported a mixed Q2, with revenue beating at $28.24B vs $26.32B expected, up 26% YoY, but profitability coming in weaker as adjusted EPS was $0.33 vs $0.51 expected, gross margin was 16.8% vs 19.4% expected, and operating margin fell to 1.4% vs 5.4% expected. Automotive revenue grew 23% YoY to $20.52B, deliveries rose 25% YoY to 480,126, production increased 10% YoY to 451,758, and free cash flow was -$1.09B, better than the -$3.25B estimate. Tesla ended the quarter with $43.52B in cash and investments, while GAAP net income was $1.11B, helped by a $1.01B unrealized gain on its SpaceX investment. The bigger story was AI and autonomy: Cybercab production began at Gigafactory Texas, Robotaxi is now operating across seven major U.S. metros, active FSD subscriptions reached 1.48M, up 56% YoY, and more than 55% of new North American deliveries included an FSD subscription. Tesla also said Optimus production lines are being installed for expected production in 2026. 5. Nvidia $NVDA CEO Jensen Huang pushed back on fears around Kimi K3, DeepSeek, and China’s open-source AI models, saying U.S. companies should be allowed to use them because developers can download, fine-tune, and guardrail the models themselves. Huang said Chinese open-source models are “excellent” and argued the market misunderstood DeepSeek the first time and is now misunderstanding Kimi. His broader point is that strong open models should expand overall AI usage, not hurt closed models, and that more AI usage ultimately means more Nvidia systems, more data centers, and more demand for accelerated compute. 6. The top 10 most active options today by contracts traded were $NVDA with 5.1M contracts, $AAPL with 1.2M contracts, $TSLA with 844K contracts, $AMZN with 828K contracts, $MU with 803K contracts, $SMCI with 746K contracts, $SPCX with 745K contracts, $MSFT with 722K contracts, $INTC with 548K contracts, and $PLTR with 540K contracts. 7. Google $GOOGL raised its FY26 capex outlook to $195B–$205B, up from $180B–$190B, as the company pulls forward capacity to keep up with stronger demand. Google said only a small portion of revenue from existing TPU system sales agreements is expected to be recognized in 2026, with most of it flowing through in 2027. Because of supply constraints, Google also plans to lean more on third-party capacity in Q3 as a temporary bridge, which could create some modest near-term margin pressure. 8. ServiceNow $NOW delivered a strong Q2, beating on revenue, EPS, cRPO, and operating margin while raising its FY26 outlook. Total revenue came in at $3.99B vs $3.92B expected, up 24% YoY, with subscription revenue up 24.5% YoY to $3.88B. Adjusted EPS was $0.90 vs $0.86 expected, and cRPO reached $13.2B, up 21% YoY and ahead of estimates. The company raised FY26 subscription revenue guidance to $15.76B–$15.78B, while guiding for 81% subscription gross margin, 31.5% operating margin, and 35% free cash flow margin. AI was the biggest highlight, with ServiceNow AI ACV crossing $1B in Q2 and agentic deployments increasing 9x in just nine months. RPO rose to $29B, customers above $5M in ACV grew 23% YoY to 658, and deals over $1M in ACV jumped roughly 40% YoY to 123. 9. Stripe generated $3.2B in free cash flow in 2025, up 52%, as revenue climbed roughly one-third to $6.8B, its fastest growth since 2021, according to The Information. The company also reached $2B of revenue in Q1 2026. Stripe’s momentum is being helped by AI customers, with the company processing subscription and usage-based payments for OpenAI, Anthropic, and other AI companies. Its billing, invoicing, and tax products are also tracking toward a $1B annual run rate this year. That level of cash generation gives Stripe more flexibility to keep expanding, following its acquisitions of Metronome and Bridge, plus the reported Stripe and Advent International offer of more than $53B for PayPal $PYPL. 10. Apple $AAPL is reportedly gearing up for a major Mac refresh cycle starting this fall and continuing through 2027, per Bloomberg. The first wave is expected to include an M6 14-inch MacBook Pro and updated iMacs, followed later by redesigned 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pros featuring OLED touchscreens. Apple is also working on new MacBook Air, MacBook Neo, Mac mini, and Mac Studio models, though some release timing may depend on memory-chip availability. 11. Baird reiterated Nebius $NBIS at Outperform with a $250 price target, arguing the company is well positioned as AI workloads shift from training toward inference. The firm’s bullish view is built around Nebius’ full-stack platform, strong software attach, expanding customer base, sector-leading growth, and experienced team from the Yandex carve-out. Baird also said Nebius is moving quickly to strengthen its stack through high-quality acquisitions, helping it compete in a fast-changing AI infrastructure market. 12. OpenAI is now reportedly forecasting roughly $750B of compute spending through 2030, up from about $600B earlier this year, as it continues locking down cloud and data center capacity, per WSJ. The company also announced a $20B initial investment in Project Camellia in Georgia, where OpenAI will serve as lead designer and developer for the first time, with 3.2GW of power contracted between 2028 and 2032. Other reported infrastructure commitments include 6GW with Oracle, $138B over eight years with AWS, and another $250B tied to Microsoft Azure. WALL STREET IS THE GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH.
