With hype reaching Linsanity levels, Nvidia reported its Q4 fiscal earnings to a breathless Wall Street that was wondering: Is the AI revolution real, or is it another bubble just waiting to burst?

It’s real, and it’s spectacular.

The tech giant, whose advanced chips underpin the burgeoning AI ecosystem, crushed expectations with quarterly sales reaching $22.1 billion, a 265% increase from the same period a year ago. Its net profit also surged to $12.3 billion vs. $1.4 billion in the same period last year. Nvidia’s slam-dunk quarter capped off “one of the quickest rises in corporate history,” the WSJ gushed.

In a statement, CEO Jensen Huang said that AI has hit a “tipping point” with demand “surging worldwide across companies, industries, and nations.” And he would know—his company controls ~80% of the high-end AI chip market, per Reuters.

“The most important stock on planet Earth”

Ahead of this earnings report, Goldman Sachs’s trading desk dubbed Nvidia “the most important stock on planet Earth,” because Nvidia is a proxy for AI demand, and AI demand has been the main driver of the stock market for the past year.

• Nvidia, the best-performing S&P 500 stock of 2023, dethroned Tesla as the most-traded stock by value.
• It added more than $1.2 trillion in market cap in the last 12 months, briefly becoming the third-most valuable company in the country last week, ahead of Alphabet and Amazon.

Can anything stop this train?

US–China tensions could slow it down. Nvidia has historically relied on China for a quarter of its revenue, but sales in the country have dropped significantly since the US placed export restrictions on advanced American chips to Chinese companies, CFO Colette Kress said.

Plus, the competition is heating up: OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is reportedly trying to raise up to $7 trillion to build AI infrastructure that would rival Nvidia’s.

For now, though, Nvidia is streets ahead of the rest.—NF

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Biden cancels $1.2 billion of student loan debt. Nearly 153,000 people got an email from the White House yesterday notifying them that they no longer owe the Department of Education any money because of President Joe Biden’s new SAVE repayment plan. The program’s first wave of total student loan forgiveness—which comes almost six months ahead of schedule—applies to anyone who has been paying off small federal loans of $12,000 or less for at least 10 years (full explainer here). The Biden administration says it has canceled a total of $138 billion in federal student loans, which the president is looking to emphasize on the campaign trail.

Execs who misuse the company jet could be in trouble. The IRS is cracking down on the companies that allegedly save millions by writing off personal PJ flights as business trips. Announced yesterday, the IRS’s audit of corporate plane usage will also hold accountable passengers who didn’t report the non-business trips on their tax forms. To parse through dozens of corporations’ business deductions, the IRS will use new tech developed with some of the $80 billion it received from the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022. Lawmakers already rescinded $20 billion of that funding, and the IRS is currently trying to convince Republicans in Congress that it’s worth letting them keep the rest.

Apple released a sports app for the iPhone. The free app, called Apple Sports, will show real-time scores, stats, and betting lines supplied by DraftKings. It could be a draw for fans who complain about ESPN’s app, but the ultimate goal is to push you to AppleTV+, where the company has been investing billions of dollars in live sports rights. Apple’s entering the second year of its deal to stream MLS, whose season kicked off last night with Lionel Messi’s Inter Miami vs. Real Salt Lake. Apple has also acquired the rights to stream some MLB games, and if this app is any indication, it’s going all-in on sports coverage.

Alabama’s Supreme Court made a first-of-its-kind ruling last week that embryos can be considered children under state law. Medical professionals and abortion advocates had predicted this kind of legal precedent would be set following the 2022 reversal of Roe v. Wade and that it could create massive uncertainty in the fertility industry.

The appeal before the court sought to overturn an earlier decision that couples could not sue a medical center for the wrongful death of a child after an unauthorized person entered a fertility clinic and destroyed embryos. The Alabama Supreme Court overturned the earlier decision, allowing the lawsuit to proceed, and in vitro fertilization (IVF) providers are scrambling to interpret what the ruling means for them.

• IVF involves removing eggs from ovaries, fertilizing them outside the body, and transferring a resultant embryo into the uterus. The process usually results in leftover embryos that are either frozen or destroyed.
• The Alabama ruling puts providers at risk of being charged criminally for what have been up until now standard practices. It could also drive up the cost of an already expensive procedure and potentially force clinics to shut down.

Yesterday, the University of Alabama at Birmingham, the largest hospital in the state, paused IVF treatment for patients, citing the ruling.

Big picture: Legal experts say more states could pass similar laws, threatening the booming fertility industry in the US, where ~2% of babies are born via IVF each year. The fertility services market was worth $54 billion in 2023 and is expected to jump to $90 billion by 2027, according to The Business Research Company.—MM

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The start of baseball spring training is typically characterized by cooped-up Northerners getting sunburnt in Florida or Arizona. This year, it’s being consumed by a full-blown sartorial controversy.

Ahead of the 2024 season, Major League Baseball rolled out its new Nike Vapor Premier on-field jerseys. But instead of softer and more breathable fabric, which Nike said it would deliver, a lot of players are finding that their new uniform more closely resembles “a knockoff jersey from TJ Maxx.”

• In addition to complaining about poor fit and poor quality, players are upset about the jerseys’ smaller lettering and the loss of classic stitching and embroidery.
• The new uniforms also don’t allow for tailored pants—which players rely on, since they often don’t fit into typical size proportions.

Baseball fans aren’t fanatic about the changes, either. Though Nike designed the jerseys, fans are blasting the manufacturer, sports merch conglomerate Fanatics. The company has been criticized for its growing dominance over the sportswear industry in the past, and many fans blame it for a) higher prices b) lower quality and c) fewer options. Both CNN and The Athletic reported that Fanatics declined to comment.

Looking ahead...players took the issue to the MLB Players Association, which said it hopes to fix the jersey situation before the start of the regular season in five weeks.—CC

Stat: The chances of getting hit by falling satellite debris are estimated to be about one in 1 billion…so in a perfect world, eight people just had a wild jumpscare. A retired climate satellite that’s been in space since 1995 came back down to Earth yesterday, 13 years after the European Space Agency (ESA) deactivated it. The 5,000-pound hunk of metal mostly burnt up as it reentered the atmosphere, and some fragments may have fallen harmlessly into the Pacific Ocean (not on people’s heads), like most space junk. Before decommissioning the radar, the ESA set it on a gradual de-orbit path instead of letting it join the space junk graveyard surrounding Earth.

Quote: “Can’t wait for this flight to be over.”

A United Airlines flight from San Francisco to Boston had to make an emergency landing in Denver this week after passengers noticed that a panel on one of the wings was flapping in the wind. In a video showing the wing issue, one passenger expressed his desire to kiss the ground ASAP. Another looked out the window after hearing loud noises, snapped a pic of the Boeing aircraft’s damage, and consulted Reddit mid-flight, asking, “How panicked should I be? Do I need to tell a flight crew member?” The FAA is investigating, but some experts say the damage appeared pretty minor.

Read: Why entertainment is dead, and what is replacing it. (The Honest Broker)

Celebrities have always loved doing it for the plot, but now they’re actually writing it down, fueling a boom in memoirs. Whether it’s Britney Spears, Brittney Griner, or a teen star you haven’t thought about since 2012, seemingly every famous person alive is now putting pen to paper and spilling their personal tea. We dove into the phenomenon and chatted with the people who plan, help write, read, and sell the juicy tell-alls that are filling your local B&N.

Read all about it here.

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