Good evening, you're tuned in to Markets Desk.
Alphabet posted a strong quarter, reporting its twelfth consecutive period of double-digit revenue growth, with nine hundred fifty million monthly active users now on Gemini. But the headline that nearly got buried was a ninety-eight billion dollar gain from equity investments, likely tied to SpaceX and Anthropic, disclosed in a single sentence. Shares remain under mild pressure as investors weigh that windfall against mounting AI infrastructure costs.
Shifting to Big Blue, IBM has cut its full-year forecast after an earnings warning, signaling that the company's pivot toward AI-driven productivity has yet to fully offset softness elsewhere in the business. Management is leaning on a new internal coding tool called Bob to improve margins, but the lowered guidance rattled investors and raises questions about the pace of enterprise tech spending more broadly.
On the macro front, the Trump administration is deferring more than one billion dollars in Medicaid payments to California and Minnesota, citing suspected fraud and noncompliance. The move is the latest in a pattern of targeted federal funding pressure on Democratic-led states, and it introduces fresh uncertainty into state budget planning and healthcare provider cash flows heading into the fall.
That's the tape. Markets Desk, signing off the floor.
