Down Bad
Apple's Q3 2025 • Amazon's Q2 2025 • Figma's Comeback • The 'AI Trinity' • iPhone 17 Dummies
As many of you have noticed and noted, Spyglass itself has been down for the past 10 hours or so — and counting — the site on which it runs, Ghost, is having some major issues that they’re working on resolving. But as such, linking to my own writing there is not really feasible at the moment, so this blurb alone will have to do today.
As timing would have it, I’m also headed out on vacation next week. And while I’d expect writing to happen here and there, these daily missives will take a little break. See you on the other side. 🍻
• Written on an M4 MacBook Air 💻
• Sent from London, England 🏴 Notebook
📱 Apple’s Well-Oiled Q3 — While all anyone wants to talk about may be AI, it’s not impacting Apple’s actual business — yet. iPhone sales were strong (helped by pull-forward sales on fears of tariff price-increases), China sales were up (helped by a subsidy), and Services continued to soar (albeit with a rather remarkable disclosure that assumes "the current revenue-share agreement with Google continues"). As for AI, Tim Cook would obviously not get pinned down on spend (which won’t look impressive relative to their peers) but said they were ramping: "putting all of our energy behind it." And yes, clearly very open to M&A, "not stuck on a certain size company", which is sort of a wild thing to signal! Especially for Apple! The stock is up slightly in after-hours. Which is better than… [Techmeme]
📉 Amazon’s Relatively Weak Q2 — While Amazon also beat or matched their expected numbers for the quarter, they didn’t nearly do so with the gusto of Meta and Microsoft the day earlier so… unlike the stock surges those two saw yesterday, Amazon’s stock is down nearly 8% in after-hours. The main issue seems to be the guidance mixed with the ongoing uncertainty around tariffs — and yes, AI spend, where Amazon currently leads the pack, with over $100B committed to CapEx this fiscal year. Despite that spend, their cloud growth is roughly half the rate of both Microsoft and Google — albeit from a higher base. But hey, at least we may soon get ads in Alexa+ — if many of us get Alexa+ soon, that is. [Techmeme]
🎨 Figma’s Comeback — Just over a year and a half ago, Adobe’s deal to buy Figma for $20B collapsed under antitrust scrutiny. Yesterday, the company opened trading on the NYSE at $85/share — valuing it at $50B. An amazing turnaround and awesome story for a great product that the team has built into a solid business — though what happened after is getting a bit bonkers. It closed the first day trading over $115/share — up 250% from the $33/share listing price. That’s a $68B valuation. And in after-hours trading right now it’s trading right around an $80B valuation — a full 4x the scuttled Adobe deal! That’s now at 67x forward multiple (on revenue), which would put it just behind Palantir in the public markets at 80x. So now the question is can it sustain itself as a meme-like stock, or if it comes back down to Earth. Regardless, it seems to speak well to Figma’s brand recognition (tied to the new market dynamics thanks to trading platforms like Robinhood and others) and yes, pent-up demand for technology startups after years in the desert. By the way, Adobe’s current market cap? $150B. Whoa, we’re halfway there… [NYT]
I Quote…
"The Magnificent 7 has shrunk to the AI trinity."
— Dec Mullarkey, managing director at fund manager SLC Management, discussing how not all of the 'Big Tech' stocks may be equal any longer, with those at the forefront of AI breaking away.
It’s interesting that Mullarkey apparently includes Meta in this trifecta (alongside the $4Ts NVIDIA and Microsoft) and not Google, which is clearly far ahead with regard to AI. But their stock has gotten little to no benefit from that work in recent months, where as the past week’s boost to Meta inches them closer to Google in market cap…
Ditto with Amazon, which is clearly spending more on CapEx than anyone else right now — though they don’t break-out their AI spend versus just their other logistics needs, where are obviously a lot. To that end, Amazon clearly has a lot of other things going on whereas Meta is clearly going all-in on AI, because they’re behind!
Poor Apple, they’re clearly not even considered to be in this conversation as they’re being left in the market cap dust (well, as much as a company with a $3T market cap can be left in any dust)…
Loose Leaf
The Fox deal to buy a stake in IndyCar continues the trend of deals that go beyond simple sports broadcast rights — as seems to be about to happen with Disney/ESPN and the NFL. [WSJ]
Fox also seems to be at the forefront of striking deals with independent brands/creators, which is clearly the way media is heading and should help some of their age demographic challenges! [Semafor]
In their new earnings filings, Microsoft is the latest to drop the use of an enemies list — the list of companies they consider to be competitors — something their competitors Amazon and Alphabet also no longer do, but which Microsoft had done for over 30 years. Sort of funny that they did this right after adding their frenemy OpenAI to this list in the last update to the list… [CNBC]
Just yesterday, I noted that it was curious that Jesse Eisenberg’s name wasn’t listed in the potential cast for Aaron Sorkin’s upcoming sequel to The Social Network — and that’s because Succession’s Jeremy Strong may take on the role of Zuck! It seems like Eisenberg no longer wants the association (and Sorkin might also want distance from any nostalgic memories from the first film that might distract from his clear his anti-Facebook/Meta points). [THR]
In other tech bro movie news, filming of Luca Guadagnino’s Artificial — aka The OpenAI Movie — is underway in San Francisco. Check out the shot of Yura Borisov as Ilya Sutskever! [SFist]
Denis Villeneuve’s Bond finds its writer in Steven Knight — best known as the writer/creator of Peaky Blinders. His film screenplays include Dirty Pretty Things and Eastern Promises, which should make for an interesting potential mix for James Bond! He’s clearly excited. [Deadline]
As for the next Bond actor — that process is on hold while Villeneuve focuses on Dune Part III, despite Vegas oddsmakers continuing to love Aaron Taylor-Johnson for the role. He might be older than what they’re looking for by the time the actual cameras get rolling? [THR]
One other favorite has seemingly taken himself out of the running: Taron Egerton. "I think I’m too messy for that." [Collider]
There are hyping things and then there’s Ford promising a "Model T Moment" for a nex-gen EV unveiling in a couple weeks… [InsideEVs]
In tangential news, Apple is opening a "manufacturing academy" in Ford’s backyard in Detroit. Undoubtedly in part to please you-know-who. Sadly, in partnership with the "Little Brother" school to the north (west). [CNBC]
The shift from Dotdash Meredith to People Inc. has got to be one of the better re-brandings in recent memory. And not just because 'Dotdash Meredith' was one of worst randomly combined names ever, but also 'People' is a brand everyone knows even if you no longer read it — and an especially interesting one in the Age of AI! Nice work, IAC. [Axios]
I Spy...
Seemingly Apple’s entire iPhone 17 product line up? I mean, to be clear, these are dummies — mock-up products made based off of leaked specs and assumptions. Still, it’s still just crazy to me that we’ve gone from whispered descriptions of features to drawn mock-ups, to actually created mock-ups that get their own hands-on videos!
I do wonder if the orange color is really going to be that orange, as I would hope for something more copper, but I guess Pantone doesn’t lie — though they clearly won’t call it "Papaya" right?…
