Markets edged higher on Monday after posting their best week of the year as traders await an update on monetary policy, with Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell set to speak at Jackson Hole on Friday.
In the meantime, headlines on Monday morning have three key stocks — AMD ( AMD ), Palantir ( PLTR ), and fuboTV ( FUBO ) on the move:
AMD: Shares of the chipmaker rose about 2% early Monday after the company announced plans to acquire hyperscale solutions provider ZT Systems in a deal valued at $4.9 billion.
AMD said ZT Systems, which provides artificial intelligence (AI) and general compute infrastructure, will help it "deliver leadership AI training and inferencing solutions" and will also help "cloud and enterprise customers significantly accelerate the deployment of AMD-powered AI infrastructure at scale."
The deal comes as AMD looks to broaden its AI infrastructure in order to compete with market leader Nvidia ( NVDA ). Shares of AMD are up just over 2% since the start of the year while Nvidia shares have soared about 150%. Nvidia will report second quarter earnings next week.
Palantir: Data analytics company Palantir was in the spotlight on Monday after co-founder and CEO Alex Karp participated in an in-depth New York Times profile . In the interview, Karp, who largely stays out of the spotlight, defended his military partnerships, discussed his political views, and laid out the origin story of Palantir, along with his relationship with co-founder Peter Thiel.
Palantir has faced recent criticism over its work with the military and US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE. Notably, the company does not do business with China, Russia, or other countries that are outwardly against Western ideologies.
"If you believe we should appease Iran, Russia, and China by saying we’re going to be nicer and nicer and nicer, of course you’ll look at Palantir negatively. Some of these places want you to do the apology show for what you believe in, and we don’t apologize for what we believe in," Karp said. "I’m not going to apologize for defending the US government on the border, defending the Special Ops, bringing the people home. I’m not apologizing for giving our product to Ukraine or Israel or lots of other places.”
Palantir shares hugged the flat line on Monday but have climbed more than 85% since the start of the year.
fuboTV: Shares of sports streamer fuboTV rallied another 30% on Monday following a Friday ruling that temporarily blocked the launch of Venu Sports, the upcoming sports streaming service from Disney's ESPN ( DIS ), Warner Bros. Discovery ( WBD ), and Fox ( FOXA ).
US District Judge Margaret Garnett determined in her ruling that the launch of the joint venture would "substantially lessen competition and restrain trade." Furthermore, it would also ensure "a swift exodus of large numbers of Fubo’s subscribers" and that "Fubo’s bankruptcy and delisting of the company’s stock will likely soon follow. These are quintessential harms that money cannot adequately repair."
The preliminary injunction comes after fuboTV filed a lawsuit against the media giants behind the joint venture in February, seeking to block the service. At the time, fubo cited "the extreme suppression of competition in the US sports-focused streaming market."
Disney, Warner Bros., and Fox said they will be appealing the ruling. Shares of those companies were little changed on the news. Year to date, fuboTV stock is still down about 40%.
Alexandra Canal @allie_canal , LinkedIn,
