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Good morning and, if you haven’t already, go vote.
John Ternus, meet tough crowd. Apple shares were down 2.8% in after-hours trading Monday even as the tech giant’s fiscal fourth quarter earnings report, its first with the new CEO, beat top and bottom line expectations. A better-than-expected forecast of 7% to 10% revenue growth next quarter, iPhone revenue up 17% to $57.6 billion and Mac revenue up 24% to $10.8 billion weren’t enough for investors.
Nitpickers have plenty to rue about. Up 9.8%, Apple’s record $31.6 billion in services revenue narrowly missed expectations. China sales, which climbed 21% to $17.5 billion, were more than $1 billion behind analysts’ estimates. And, in two cases of outright disappointment, iPad revenue fell 10% year over year to $6.2 billion and wearables revenue fell 7.9% to $8.3 billion. Don’t expect corporate to break a sweat just yet. With a backlog of deliveries of the new iPhone Duo now stretching into 2027, Apple is still managing plenty of Tern-over.
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MARKETS
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Stock data as of market close on November 2, 2026.
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Photo via IMAGO/Vernon Yuen/IMAGO/Nexpher Images/Newscom
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Marvell – the extra letter L means we’re talking about optical components and not the optical blasts of the X-Men’s Cyclops – is making the AI cycle’s biggest M&A plays.
The Santa Clara, Calif.-based semiconductor group announced a $115 billion bet on AI infrastructure with the acquisition of Lumentum, which would massively expand its portfolio of optical components used in data centers and create a “category leader in AI connectivity.” The all-stock deal, if completed, would be the biggest ever merger of two publicly listed American tech companies, though one financial services firm wondered whether they’ll ultimately make it down the wedding aisle.
A Connection Is Made
Marvell is chip designer to the hyperscaler stars. The 31-year-old company develops tailor-made AI accelerator chips for hyperscalers, among them Amazon and Microsoft. In July, Google secured the right to buy up to $12.2 billion in Marvell shares as part of a deal to jointly develop custom AI chips.
It’s also grown significantly in recent years via acquisition, including a $5.5 billion deal for optical interconnectivity startup Celestial AI that closed in February. And so cue Monday’s announcement that it plans to acquire San Jose-based Lumentum, a much larger specialist in optical connectivity. Data centers and AI processors are increasingly reliant on optical and photonic networks as light and lasers carry far more data at faster speeds than traditional copper wire systems. The Lumentum takeover is a wager that bigger, more sophisticated clusters of AI chips will need more sophisticated networking infrastructure. The deal comes right on the heels of a jittery October for the AI infrastructure trade, which dragged the tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 down 6.7% last month, its worst since March 2025.
Since it’s an all-stock deal, the actual value of the Lumentum acquisition depends on what Marvell shares are worth when it closes, which is not expected to happen until the first half of 2028. Lumentum shareholders will then get 4.5 Marvell shares for every Lumentum share. And, after Monday’s market reaction, they’re suddenly worth a fair bit less. Marvell closed down 12.7%, while Lumentum sank 18.6% (shares in Marvell are still up 90% this year and Lumentum is up 77%). Analysts at Morningstar said the deal “makes sense” insofar as it adds to Marvell’s optical portfolio, which could capture more AI infrastructure spending going forward. But, they warned of an overpay or ultimately no acquisition:
- “This deal is only market talk for now,” they wrote. “We put the probability that a deal goes through somewhere below 50% and worry about the price Marvell shareholders would pay.”
- “Lumentum’s extraordinary results have been at least partially driven by pricing and tight supply, while low-priced competition lurks in China,” they added. “If current results turn out to be even partially cyclical, Marvell could be overpaying for a weaker asset than it bargained for.” On the other hand, they forecast Lumentum will post a 46% five-year compound growth rate and said cross-selling and shared costs make a bull case for the merger.
  Vote of Confidence: Nvidia invested $2 billion each in Marvell and Lumentum, both suppliers, in separate deals this spring. Earlier this year, CEO Jensen Huang called Marvell, currently worth roughly $150 billion, the “next $1 trillion company.”
Written by Sean Craig
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How far back does your data go? Many free financials stop after a few years, so the only stretch you can examine is the recent past.
But how did the company you’re vetting hold up through the credit crisis, or the dot-com bust? The information is out there, and it’s more accessible than you’d think.
A Yahoo Finance Gold subscription gives you up to 40 years of income statements, balance sheets, and cash flow history on the tickers you follow, exportable to CSV, so you can see how a business held up, year by year.
You’ll also unlock the AlphaSpace platform, which puts your charts, your price alerts, broker-grade news, and live options flow in one view.
Take seven days free before you decide. Start your Yahoo Finance Gold trial.
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Larry Ellison has a message to Oracle investors: We promise, we’re finally done.
The software-giant-turned-hyperscaler threw two big bones to capex critics at its investor day last week. First: that the company would only raise an additional $20 billion in funding through 2030, notably less than expected. Second: that it would post positive free cash flow in the second half of its next fiscal year (which would be the six months ending May 2028), an earlier expected payoff for its massive AI gamble. Oracle wasted no time in fulfilling the first half of that pledge, revealing in SEC filings on Monday it intends to raise $10 billion in bonds and another $10 billion in equity.
Sticker Shock and Awe
Wall Street, in turn, wasted no time showing their continued unease: Shares of the company, already down some 30% year to date heading into the week, plummeted another 9% on Monday, wiping out all the goodwill gains earned from last week’s pair of promises. And there’s plenty of reason for the widespread skepticism. In its most recent earnings call, Oracle said it had $125.34 billion in notes payable and other borrowings as of August 31. Its entire fiscal year 2026 revenue, meanwhile, came in at just $67 billion.
The debt isn’t cheap either: S&P downgraded the company’s debt in July to BBB-, or just a step above junk rating. That status seemed to dictate the terms of the company’s purported final debt sale for the next few years, though it hasn’t put a dent in demand:
- Oracle sold the $10 billion in debt across five different tranches ranging from three to 20 years, according to a source who spoke to Bloomberg. The bonds were priced at 0.3 percentage points higher than the company’s existing debt, while yields on the longest-term notes were priced at 3.35 percentage points higher than Treasuries, or around the typical junk-rated yield range.
- Demand for the bond sale peaked at $38 billion, per Bloomberg, a sign of continued healthy demand in capital markets for even ostensibly junk-rated corporate bonds in the AI space.
Fed Up: Oracle isn’t the only hyperscaler that has to keep an eye on their credit score. Last week, S&P lowered the outlook on Meta’s AA- debt to negative. It’s a sign that the debt could soon be downgraded, as “Meta’s ability to monetize its AI investments is more limited than that of its peers” S&P wrote. Of course, even a single notch downgrade would leave Meta debt comfortably in high-grade territory. It’s a nice reminder: You can get away with a lot if you already have most of the world’s teenagers and many of its adults hooked on your infinite scroll.
Written by Brian Boyle
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Binancians are losing loyalty fast. Users pulled a net $4.72 billion off the exchange as Binance raced to reassure its users it won’t leave them holding the (empty) bag. Co-founder Changpeng Zhao posted on X that the exchange is covering 100% of losses with funds from its own balance sheet.
Zhao also wrote on X that “No tech is 100% secure,” a less reassuring admission. As crypto quakes in the aftermath of its biggest-ever breach, it could be cybersecurity firms’ time to shine. Deutsche Bank analysts expect AI to create more need for cybersecurity firms like CrowdStrike, which the bank upgraded yesterday.
Black-Hat Halloween
Cybercrime costs victims around the world $1.24 trillion annually, Comparitech estimated, and the US is hit the hardest with a $139 billion share of the total losses. Hackers could get even more ambitious as they test the boundaries of AI’s nefarious uses.
CrowdStrike last week ID’d a China-based group known as Vapor Panda deploying an AI program to simultaneously probe vulnerabilities across organizations including semiconductor companies and governments. The AI tool was used to scope out attack paths at more than 200 organizations.
Then came the Binance hack, which was the grand finale of a cybercrime spree dubbed “Black October” and could be a harbinger of future AI-fueled crime:
- The group the FBI is blaming for the $6.3 billion hack of Binance, North Korea’s “TraderTraitor,” has stepped up its crime-game by adding AI to its arsenal, Bloomberg reported. AI is helping the group identify high-value targets and from there, the new tech is making it easier and faster to carry out attacks.
- The group made off with $3.3 billion worth of crypto from Binance after stablecoin issuers froze $2.9 billion. Getting away with that much is a feat TraderTraitor is thought to have achieved by automating thousands of transactions, rapidly laundering its crypto haul across complex networks. How much of a hand AI had in this part of Binance’s hack is up for debate — blockchain analytics firm Elliptic thinks the laundering was the handiwork of traditional software, not AI agents.
Two Can Play: Black October saw multiple hacks rock people’s confidence in cybersecurity. But cybersecurity firms have new AI tools to fight back against breaches, too. CrowdStrike on Monday expanded its partnership with CoreWeave, with a focus on strengthening its AI toolset.
Written by Jamie Wilde
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- New Numbers: Ahead of its IPO, Anthropic reported revenue rose to $17 billion in the third quarter from $11.5 billion in Q2, and its net loss fell to $22.3 billion from $66.3 billion.
- Pacific Pause: A group representing nearly every major US automaker has called for a permanent ban on Chinese cars in America.
- Commercial Appeal: Palantir’s US commercial revenue increased 148% to $984 million in its most recent quarter, surpassing the $953 million in US government revenue; it’s the first time the company’s commercial revenue has ever exceeded its government revenue.
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