Democratic socialist Nithya Raman toppled embattled Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass in a stunning upset, putting South Asian immigrants on course to lead America's two largest cities.
Why it matters: With New York's Zohran Mamdani already in office, Raman's win puts democratic socialists on track to run two of America's most powerful city halls — testing whether their promises on affordable housing and better government can survive the pressures of governing.
Tech stocks plunged Thursday in the most visible sign yet that investors are growing worried about a slowdown in the AI boom.
The latest: The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite index was down 4.7% at 3 p.m., with just an hour left in trading. The broader stock market was also down sharply.
The sell-off is shaping up to be the stock market's worst showing since the April 2025 tariff panic.
LIV Golf is officially shutting down, with attorneys on Thursday telling a bankruptcy court in New Jersey that the Saudi-backed league would transition from a restructuring plan to a liquidation.
Driving the news: This comes less than 24 hours after investment firm BC Partners walked away from a $300 million investment in LIV Golf, which had been on life support since Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund pulled its financial support.
Productivity growth was strong in the third quarter, the latest sign that America's growth potential looks bright.
Driving the news: Output per hour of labor rose at a 3.6% annual rate in the July through September period, the Labor Department said Thursday morning, the strongest in a year.
Democrats won the midterms on voter frustration with high prices. Now they face the same problem that sank Republicans: Americans want lower prices, and there is little that policymakers can do to deliver them quickly.
Why it matters: Prices for necessities like groceries and gas can fall in a healthy economy. But the kind of broad price declines that would reverse years of price gains would likely come with job losses and falling incomes, leaving households worse off than before.
It sets up an early test for the incoming Democratic-controlled Congress and Democrats in statehouses across the country: delivering relief that voters can actually feel in their household budgets.
Zipline, a South San Francisco-based drone delivery service, on Thursday announced that it's raised $1.5 billion at a $21.5 billion post-money valuation. It also expanded its Walmart partnership.
Why it matters: Drone delivery may eventually supplant data centers as the target of local community ire against Big Tech, as evidenced by a recent battle between my hometown and Amazon.
The AI industry is scrambling to repackage a $10 trillion infrastructure buildout to appease a hostile electorate that overwhelmingly voted to restrict data center construction in ballot measures across the country.
It's not just changing the name of data centers to "compute campuses," but offering communities real money, including dividends and benefits for schools or cities, plus environmental concessions and labor protections.
Why it matters: Tuesday's election proved voters won't tolerate unchecked growth, although the market and many analysts see the blue wave slowing — but not stopping — data center construction around the U.S. To prevent an existential threat, the world's biggest companies are working on a rebrand.
How well they execute on their promises will determine the pace of the global AI race.
Voters clearly put the brakes on the AI buildout this week, but the biggest tech companies kept on rolling.
Why it matters: The rally in the shares of the likes of Microsoft and Amazon reflects a growing realization on Wall Street that a slowdown in the AI race may not be such a bad thing.
If companies can put off enormous spending commitments, they get to show healthier cash flows, avoid financing costs and possibly sidestep risky investments.
President Trump has conceded that the Iran war cost Republicans dearly in the midterms. Now he must decide whether to cut his losses and reach a deal — or double down and go back to bombing.
Why it matters: All of Trump's options are problematic:
The first is to strike. But going back to war would be highly unpopular — keeping gas prices high and probably not yielding a better military result.
Another is to negotiate. But if Iranian officals refuse to make concessions — or, sensing weakness after the president's political loss, up their demands — Trump will have a hard time reaching a deal.
Oil prices fell sharply Wednesday as traders weigh signs — including a widely circulated post by Vice President JD Vance — that the midterm election will add pressure on the White House to find an offramp from the Iran conflict.
A recurring subplot of President Trump's term has been a desire to replace Biden appointees to the powerful Federal Reserve Board of Governors — even ahead of their terms ending — with allies. That effort now looks dead in the water.
Why it matters: Even if Trump succeeds in his efforts to fire governor Lisa Cook, or to oust any of the other three Biden-era holdovers on the seven-member board, a Democratic Senate will likely block any replacements it views as insufficiently independent from the administration.
Ford says drivers who don't want their cars collecting and sharing personal information can go "full '80s mode" by turning off connectivity altogether.
Why it matters: Earning consumers' trust on data privacy is becoming critical for automakers racing to turn vehicles into intelligent personal assistants, prompting new assurances that customers' personal information is safe.
The stunning Democratic victory in midterm elections Tuesday will have consequences for U.S. economic policy. But they are likely to be subtle, and revealed over time.
The big picture: President Trump has, for the most part, shaped economic policy through executive action rather than by passing laws. His executive powers will remain intact even after Democrats take hefty majorities in both the House and Senate in January.
Venture capitalists love to talk about pivoting. Good. They're gonna have to.
The big picture: This isn't about personal politics, although there are certainly some venture frontrunners who will hope that folks memory-hole the past two years.
It's about how the investment math may have just changed for AI — which now dominates venture investments and returns.
Palantir Technologies, the AI-driven analytics platform known for its work for the military, reported better-than-expected quarterly sales and earnings and raised its full-year sales guidance, yet still its stock slumped.
Why it matters: Such a lackluster response to an erstwhile favorite of retail traders underscores how investor psychology has shifted from the FOMO-fueled run-up between 2023 and 2025 to today's gnawing concerns about the durability of the AI boom.
The big picture: In recent years, the AI software company had been one of the top gainers in the S&P 500, which Palantir joined in September 2024.
Its shares rose roughly 340% in 2024 and 135% last year, riding a combination of retail enthusiasm, AI-related optimism, interest in military technology and its perceived advantages of connections to the Trump administration. (The company's co-founder, chairman and top individual shareholder is billionaire Republican megadonor Peter Thiel.)
Yes, but: Palantir's roughly 2,000% increase in its stock price over the last four years vastly outpaced the company's actual fundamentals, resulting in valuation metrics that ranged from the extreme to the arguably lunatic.
Palantir's forward price-to-earnings ratio peaked at 255 times in November 2025 and was over 100 times well into this year.
A fairly valued company is traditionally considered around 15 times. The S&P 500 is currently about 18.5 times.
Palantir's forward price-to-sales multiple, meanwhile, topped out at more than 90 times in November 2025.
For those not accustomed to these kinds of measures, that is mind-blowing.
As a point of comparison, the S&P 500 currently has a forward-price-to-sales ratio of 3.1 times.
Between the lines: Then a funny thing happened. Palantir really started delivering the goods, financially speaking.
Earnings per share jumped 64% in 2024, 83% in 2025, and they're expected to rise 122% when 2026 is done and dusted.
Sales accelerated too, rising 29% in 2024 and 56% in 2025. They are expected to jump 89% this year.
There's more. Margins expanded, as did backlogs. Costs stayed in check. Palantir's U.S. commercial division, focused on selling software to help companies use AI more productively, saw sales soar.
Zoom in: Analysts say one blemish on Palantir's third-quarter numbers — which it released Monday after the close — was that its order backlogs were largely flat quarter over quarter.
That might seem a small nit to pick. But it touched a nerve for investors increasingly concerned about the sustainability of the AI trade.
What they're saying: "Over the past three months, tech investors have placed greater scrutiny on the results of companies across the AI ecosystem," wrote Louie DiPalma, who covers Palantir for the brokerage firm William Blair.
"The valuations for many AI supply chain providers have been cut in half on concerns that recent growth is unsustainable."
Likewise, Brent Thill, who covers Palantir for Jefferies, noted that "the debate is increasingly about sustaining acceleration against a larger base, rather than whether underlying demand remains strong."
The bottom line: None of this means that Palantir is troubled. In fact, just the opposite: The company has done so well that it has become harder and harder to wow the market, or as Thill puts it, "comps keep getting tougher."
But it also suggests a subtle shift among the investing public toward caring about the realities of the present, rather than seeing only limitless AI upside ahead.
Voters showed deep distrust of the AI race Tuesday, approving dozens of data center moratoriums and electing a raft of candidates who favor slowing a $10 trillion buildout, including in Texas — the epicenter of the boom.
Why it matters: In an election that hinged on an affordability crisis for many Americans, voters made it clear they view Silicon Valley's AI ambitions not as a technological miracle, but as a resource-draining threat to their wallets and communities.
The results were a warning shot to some of the nation's wealthiest and most powerful executives, many of whom are already working on ways to build a more palatable version of the revolution they are dead set on winning.
