Intel could soon announce a nearly $6 billion acquisition that would give its fledgling foundry business a boost, according to The Wall Street Journal. The chip giant is reportedly close to clinching a deal to purchase Israeli chip company Tower Semiconductor, and it could be announced sometime this week unless the talks suddenly fall apart. 

Tower, which has a market value of around $3.6 billion, produces various types of chips for clients across industries, including automakers and medical and industrial equipment manufacturers. Its website shows that it has seven fabrication facilities located in Israel, Italy, the US and Japan making 6-inch, 8-inch and 12-inch chips. Tom's Hardware says the manufacturing processes it uses aren't cutting edge, but the chips it makes don't need the latest technologies anyway. Tower only needs to reliably and regularly generate large volumes of chips. 

Before Tower, Intel was reported to be in talks to purchase the much larger chip manufacturer and AMD spinoff GlobalFoundries for around $30 billion. It didn't push through, however, and GlobalFoundries chose to pursue an initial public offering instead. 

Intel launched its foundry services back in 2021 when it committed $20 billion to build two Arizona factories and explained that it will be run as its own business unit. Earlier this year, the company also revealed its plans to build a massive semiconductor facility in Ohio that it's hoping would become "the largest silicon manufacturing location on the planet." It will use the fabs in the complex to manufacture both its chips and chips for clients under its foundry services.

Toyota is plowing more money into EV production in the US. Just a few months after the automaker announced a $240 million investment in its West Virginia plant, it's pumping another $73 million into the facility.

The company says this will boost hybrid transaxle production capacity to 600,000 units per year. Workers at the plant will also start making around 120,000 rear motor stators annually to bolster production of electric motors. The plant can currently roll 1 million transmissions and engines off the production line per year. Following the latest investment, Toyota will have put over $2 billion into the plant.

Meanwhile, a separate $17 million investment will enable Toyota's Tennessee plant to make approximately 300,000 more hybrid transaxle cases and housings per year (the current capacity is around 1 million). The factory's workers also manufacture around 1.8 million engine blocks a year. The company says these parts are essential for all the Toyota and Lexus EVs it assembles in North America. This brings the automaker's total investment in the plant so far to $389 million.

Toyota is on a mission to offer electrified options across its entire lineup, as well as for Lexus vehicles, by 2025 and to release 30 EV models by 2030. Investing more heavily in EV production will help it reach those goals. Increasing EV battery production is important too, and the company recently announced plans to build a $1.29 billion battery plant in North Carolina.

Peloton laid off around 2,800 corporate employees as part of its attempt to get past its growth struggles following a meteoric rise to fame in the early days of the pandemic. Some of them are understandably upset and angry, and according to CNBC, some of them have crashed the company's first all-hands meeting meant to introduce the new CEO. 

In addition to letting 20 percent of its workforce go — no instructors were affected by the layoffs — Peloton also replaced its top executive. John Foley, who's also a company co-founder, stepped down and was replaced with former Spotify COO Barry McCarthy. CNBC says both former and current employees fired off angry comments in the meeting's chat section, with one calling the all-hands "awfully tone deaf." 

Another person proclaimed that they're selling all their Peloton apparel to be able to pay their bills. "The company messed up by allowing people who were fired into this chat," said yet another person. The meeting, attended by both Foley and McCarthy, was reportedly cut short.

Peloton was massively popular just over a year ago and even reached a market value of $50 billion in January 2021. Now, it's worth around $8 billion dollars, and bigger companies like Amazon and Nike are reportedly showing interest in acquiring the fitness equipment maker. While Peloton didn't say outright that it was planning to let people go, Foley previously said that the company "need[s] to evaluate [its] organization structure and size of [its] team" to make the business more flexible. That was part of his response to an older CNBC report claiming that the company was halting Bike and Tread production. Foley denied the rumor. 

The former CEO also didn't say whether the calls for him to be ousted were part of the reason he's stepping down. Activist investor Blackwells Capital previously accused him of misleading investors about certain information, among other things that cost the company $40 billion. "I have always thought there has to be a better CEO for Peloton than me," Foley said when McCarthy was formally named as the company's new CEO. McCarthy is expected to use his knowledge of content-driven subscription models to keep Peloton running, but he clearly has to win over his own employees first. 

Peloton grew massively during the COVID-19 pandemic, but now that things are opening up, it has struggled to maintain growth. Now, the company is shaking things up by replacing its CEO, overhauling the board and laying off around 20 percent of its corporate workforce, according to The Wall Street Journal.

CEO and co-founder John Foley is stepping down as CEO to become executive chairman and will be replaced by former Spotify COO Barry McCarthy, the company told the WSJ. McCarthy will reportedly bring his understanding of content-driven subscription models to Peloton. "I have always thought there has to be a better CEO for Peloton than me," said Foley said. "Barry is more perfectly suited than anybody I could’ve imagined." On top of that, the company is cutting around 2,800 corporate positions. 

On top of its financial struggles, Peloton has been hit by bad press over equipment safety, unpaid employees and even not-so-positive mentions in recent TV shows. With the value of the company tumbling from a peak of $50 billion to around $8 billion last week, it has been a subject of takeover rumors from the likes of Amazon, Nike and even Apple. 

Peloton will discuss its plans to deal with the crisis in more detail when it reveals its second quarter results later today. It's expected to cut $800 million in costs and stop development of its $400 million Ohio factory, among other changes. In January, the company reported $1.14 billion of preliminary Q2 revenue and said it had 2.77 million subscribers. Its earnings call is set today at 5:00 PM ET. 

NVIDIA's has reportedly abandoned its plans to purchase ARM, the UK-based business that licenses chip technology used in most smartphones. According to The Information, the deal collapsed on Monday, a year and a half after NVIDIA announced that it's purchasing the Softbank-owned chip business for cash and stock then valued at $40 billion. Based on NVIDIA's current stock prices, the deal would've been worth over $60 billion if it had gone through today. 

The planned takeover, however, was met with opposition from the start. ARM customers Qualcomm and Microsoft objected to the deal, raising concerns that NVIDIA might prevent ARM from licensing its chip designs. The massive acquisition, which would've been the largest in the chip sector, was also intensely scrutinized by regulators. UK's Competition & Markets Authority investigated it twice over its impact product prices and quality, as well as on its implications on national security. 

In the US, the Federal Trade Commission sued to block the purchase over concerns that it would stifle competition for multiple technologies. Previous reports said NVIDIA has been preparing to walk away from the deal since early January, seeing as it has made little progress on convincing regulators to approve the purchase. 

As The New York Times notes, NVIDIA repeatedly told authorities that it will keep ARM's business model and even proposed to set up a separate licensing entity for its chip designs. It also said that it will license any ARM-based IP that it develops to all companies without discrimination. "There is no evidence that a combined NVIDIA and ARM would have either the ability or the incentive to harm competition," its lawyers said in a response to FTC's lawsuit. 

ARM-owner Softbank will get a break fee of up to $1.25 billion as a result of the failed purchase, the sources said. Its Japanese parent company is also expected to take ARM public before the year ends, though it will likely have a tough time matching NVIDIA's offer.

E-commerce and cloud giant Amazon has been consulting its advisers about the possibility of purchasing Peloton, according to The Wall Street Journal. And it may not be the only bigger company that's eyeing the exercise equipment maker: The Financial Times says Nike is thinking of purchasing it, as well. Neither company has held talks with Peloton yet, and they may end up not making an offer at all.

Peloton became a hit at the beginning of the pandemic, when people were looking for fitness alternatives after their gyms closed due to lockdowns. In fact, it reached a market value of $50 billion in January 2021 — a far cry from its current $8 billion valuation. CNBC reported in January that the company had halted its Bike and Tread production amid slowing demand caused by several factors, including stiffer competition. Company CEO John Foley later denied that Peloton was pausing production in a letter to employees, but he admitted that it's "resetting [its] production levels for sustainable growth."

A few days after that report came out, BuzzFeed News published a story about several workers claiming that the company owes them money over unpaid labor. The workers are accusing Peloton of not paying them for overtime and work accomplished during breaks, as well as of not reimbursing them for company expenses. 

If Amazon truly is thinking of acquiring Peloton, it could use the company to expand its health and wellness offerings and make it easier for customers to get their hands on one of its bikes or treadmills. It certainly has the capacity to ensure delivery delays, like what happened to Peloton last year, don't happen again. As The Journal notes, an acquisition would also give Amazon access to users' data, which would be useful for its future health and wellness projects. 

Peloton hasn't dropped any hint that it's looking for a new owner, but activist investor Blackwells Capital is calling for Foley to be ousted and for the company to start finding a potential buyer. Blackwells accused Foley of making decisions that cost the company $40 billion, including misleading investors about certain information and hiring his wife in an executive role.

Nearly five years after going public, Snap is finally profitable. The company shared the milestone in its fourth-quarter earnings report, where it reported $23 million in positive net income.

That may be a tiny percentage of its $4.1 billion in quarterly revenue, but it’s an important step for the company which has at times struggled with user growth. But those challenges appear to be firmly behind Snapchat, as daily active users climbed to 319 million, an increase of 13 million for the second quarter in a row. DAUs were up 20 percent overall in 2021.

The news for shareholders was particularly welcome as Snap’s results came a day after Meta reported that Facebook’s daily active users had declined for the first time in its history. The resulting stock slide wiped more than $200 billion off the company’s market cap.

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If the bonkers preorder numbers for both the hybrid Maverick and the EV F-150 Lightning weren't enough of an indication, Ford's Q4 earnings results are plenty proof that the company's electrification efforts are already paying dividends. 

“Financial performance is obviously critical,” President and CEO Jim Farley said in a release Thursday. “We’re also proud that customers see how Ford is taking EVs mainstream, and have already ordered or reserved more than 275,000 all-electric Mustang Mach-E SUVs, F-150 Lightning pickups and E-Transit commercial vehicles – and we’re breaking constraints to deliver every one of them as fast as we can.”

In fact, the company reports that sales of its EVs in January "grew almost 4 times faster than the overall electrified segment" (13,169 units in total), making Ford the current number 2 retailer of electric vehicles in the country behind Tesla (and the country’s top-selling automaker overall), prompting a promise from Farley to double the company's global production capacity for EVs "to at least 600,000 by 2023." He expects EVs to "represent at least 40 percent of its product mix by 2030."

In all, Ford saw revenue of $37.7 billion, a net income of $12.3 billion and $2 billion in EBIT (earnings before interest and taxes) in Q4 2021. The company sold 6,513 Mavericks in January alone — with 3,549 of these sold as hybrids — along with 2,370 Mach-Es, 27 percent of which were of the GT variety. Ford also saw strong interest in its new Transit line of commercial EVs with more than 300 American businesses placing orders for 10,000 vehicles. And, while not wholly electrified, Ford did point out that its pickup lines — the F-150, Ranger, and Maverick — with combined sales of 62,293, outsold GM’s pickups in January. 

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While Sony's holiday console sales were down due to parts shortages, Nintendo managed to have a strong quarter with the Switch. Thanks to what it called a "good start" by the OLED Switch, it sold 10.67 million units in Q3 (October to December), far surpassing the 3.9 million PS5 units sold by Sony. That takes total Switch sales to 103.54 million since it launched in 2017, allowing it to surpass the Wii's lifetime sales of 101.63 million. 

Not all was perfect, though. Switch sales were still down eight percent over last year, and Nintendo revised its yearly forecast down by a million units. It now believes it will sell 23 million units, down from the 24 million it forecast last quarter. Through the first nine months, its sales are 6 percent lower over last year to $11.52 billion. 

As for software, Nintendo said it saw the highest quarterly sell-through (consumer) sales since the launch of the Switch. Pokémon remasters Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl are leading Nintendo's game sales with 13.97 million units total over the last nine months. Mario Kart 8 Deluxe has sold 7.96 million units, Mario Party Superstars sold 5.43 million units and Animal Crossing: New Horizons 4.99 million.

Metroid Dread, introduced just last year, has managed 2.74 million units since it went on sale. Nintendo also has a couple of new titles that will count for its next quarter, including Pokémon Legends Arceus that arrived on January 28th. That title got off to a good start in the UK, surpassing Animal Crossing sales in its first week. Nintendo also has Kirby and the Forgotten Land coming on March 25th. 

Mark Zuckerberg’s metaverse pivot is off to slow start. The company now known as Meta lost just over $10 billion on its Reality Labs division in 2021, according to its fourth-quarter earnings report.

“This fully realized vision is still a ways off,” Zuckerberg said of Meta’s metaverse investments. “And although the direction is clear, our path ahead is not yet perfectly defined.” Zuckerberg said the company planned to launch a new "high-end" VR headset as well as a mobile version of its Horizon VR experience.

It’s the first time the company has shared the financial performance of the AR and VR division that’s central to its metaverse ambitions. That the metaverse isn’t yet turning a profit isn’t a surprise. The company said last quarter that its AR and VR investments would result in a $10 billion loss for the company. But combined with flat user growth and continued hits to its advertising business, the company’s fourth-quarter results sent Meta's stock into a nosedive.

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Facebook’s daily active users (DAUs) declined from 1.93 billion last quarter to 1.29 billion, a change that Zuckerberg attributes in part to increased competition from TikTok. “We're in the middle of a transition on our own services towards short form video like Reels,” Zuckerberg said. “Reels is now our fastest growing content format by far.” But he added that Reels doesn’t yet monetize as well as Stories or feeds.

Though Facebook’s ad business is still incredibly profitable — it made $32.6 billion in the last quarter — the company warned that Apple’s iOS 14 privacy changes will have a significant impact in the next quarter. “The accuracy of our ads targeting decreased which increased the cost of driving outcomes,” COO Sheryl Sandberg said on the call. Zuckerberg said improving the company’s ads despite Apple’s changes was one of Facebook’s top priorities, and that it was “rebuilding a lot of our ads infrastructure.”

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