Anjali Belgaumkar

More than a quarter of Microsoft's workforce has been offered a way out as the company tries to pay for its AI ambitions. About 60,000 employees across the US, Canada, India and the UK are eligible for a new voluntary exit package, CNBC reported, citing a person familiar with the plan. That is roughly 27% of Microsoft's 223,000 staff. Eligibility now reaches vice president level, up from senior director in April's retirement scheme, where over 30% of eligible US workers accepted. A similar take-up this time would mean about 18,000 departures. Workers must decide by early December and leave on December 31. The move comes as quarterly capital spending exceeds $50 billion, up from $34.9 billion a year earlier. Microsoft reports quarterly results on Wednesday.

Nvidia shares rose 2% to $216 in premarket trading on Tuesday after the chipmaker said it will invest $3 billion in Meta Platforms' equity offering. Under the expanded partnership, Meta will run more of its next-generation Muse AI agents on Nvidia infrastructure, including Vera Rubin systems and Vera CPUs. The two companies are also working on tools to monitor how those agents behave. Meta has lifted the size of its planned share sale to as much as $97.5 billion to fund its AI buildout. Other chip stocks also gained, with Broadcom up 2.29% on a $63 billion financing deal tied to Anthropic's computing needs.

Google's custom AI chips will run inside another major cloud provider for the first time after Oracle said it is adding tensor processing units to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure. OpenAI's in-house Jalapeño chip and Cerebras hardware will join them, giving customers more options as AI chip supply stays tight. Oracle cloud chief Mahesh Thiagarajan said the move is not a shift away from Nvidia, whose chips he described as the most flexible available. Oracle is also building OpenAI's ChatGPT and Codex into its business applications, a day after Anthropic filed for its IPO. Oracle shares rose 4.67% and Cerebras gained 8.06%, though Oracle remains down more than 30% this year on concerns over funding its data centre expansion.

Boeing shares dropped about 9.6% on Tuesday after the planemaker said it will not reach a production rate of 52 737 Max jets a month until the second half of 2027, held back by slower wing output. The company currently builds about 47 a month. Third-quarter revenue rose 4% to $24.19 billion, beating the $23.84 billion forecast, but the adjusted loss of 34 cents per share was wider than the expected 21 cents. Net loss narrowed sharply to $116 million from $5.34 billion a year earlier. Defence revenue jumped 15% to $7.94 billion, while commercial aircraft sales fell 3% to $10.72 billion with a negative 6.5% operating margin. Boeing delivered 161 jets and generated $464 million in free cash flow.

Ripple has won final approval from the US Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) for Ripple National Trust Bank. That raises a question XRP

Jio Platforms made a strong stock market debut on Wednesday, opening at ₹1,358 on both NSE and BSE, a 21.36% premium to its ₹1,119 issue price. Retail investors who won a lot of 12 shares are sitting on a listing gain of about ₹2,868. The opening lifted Jio's market value to ₹12,50,586 crore within minutes of trading, well above the roughly ₹10.3 lakh crore valuation implied at the IPO price. The debut came close to grey market expectations of about ₹1,366. Jio opened above the targets of Nomura at ₹1,340 and Motilal Oswal at ₹1,350, and stands just below Elara's ₹1,367 target. The ₹30,213 crore offer is India's largest IPO and drew bids 22.19 times the shares available.

Jio Platforms shares carried a grey market premium of ₹247 on listing morning, pointing to an opening price near ₹1,366, about 22.07% above the ₹1,119 issue price. Expectations are much weaker for Paras Healthcare, the other company listing on Wednesday, whose grey market premium stood at just ₹13 as of October 27. Paras Healthcare's ₹1,450 crore issue was subscribed only 2.23 times, compared with 22.19 times for Jio. The grey market is unofficial, and listing prices are set by buy and sell orders in the pre-open session from 9 am. Regular trading in both stocks begins at 10 am on NSE and BSE.

Three brokerages have started coverage of Jio Platforms with Buy ratings on its listing day, setting targets roughly 20% to 22% above the ₹1,119 issue price. Elara Securities has the highest target at ₹1,367, followed by Motilal Oswal at ₹1,350 and Nomura at ₹1,340. Nomura called Jio a scale leader moving into a phase of higher monetisation and valued it at 12 times December 2028 rolling EBITDA, the same multiple it applies to Bharti Airtel's India wireless arm. All three point to home broadband as a key second growth driver after mobile.

Jio Platforms opened at ₹1,358 on Wednesday, 21.4% above its ₹1,119 issue price, leaving new buyers to decide whether to enter now or wait. The debut has already pushed the stock close to brokerage targets. Nomura's ₹1,340 target has been crossed, while Motilal Oswal's ₹1,350 and Elara's ₹1,367 imply little room left from the listing price. Motilal Oswal's bull case of ₹1,690 shows more potential if tariff increases of about 15% from March 2027 and broadband growth come through, though its bear case sits at ₹1,035. Bonanza's Abhinav Tiwari suggested that investors who missed the IPO could look for entry points if the stock corrects after listing. Pocketful's Sarvam Goel said much of Jio's growth may already be priced in. With less than 3% of shares in public hands, the stock could see sharp swings in early trading.

Ripple Swell’s main event had not even started yet. Even so, Ripple used the opening day of its tenth annual conference to sign Robinhood, deepen its ties