Big Tech faces the music

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Welcome back to our Sunday edition, a roundup of some of our top stories.

A venture-funded AI-friendship necklace received a lot of hate on the internet. But its 21-year-old creator is undeterred , adding that “personal vibes" have guided his decisions.?

This week’s dispatch

Big Tech’s wild week

The masters of the tech universe reported earnings this week with all eyes on their AI investments.?

Even before Amazon, Apple, Meta, and Microsoft reported earnings, investors’ focus was clear. Alphabet and Tesla had already been put through the wringer , and there were questions about OpenAI’s ability to turn a profit .?

When the dust settled, some eased concerns and bought themselves time, while others faced more scrutiny.?

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg didn’t shy away from his intention to keep plowing money into AI , but investors didn’t mind. (It also helps Meta beat revenue and earnings estimates thanks to its ads business .)

Apple bought itself some time, too . While China sales remain an issue, it beat on earnings and revenue estimates . The tech giant’s newest iPhone model and Apple Intelligence set to be released this fall will be another test on the effectiveness of Apple’s AI spend .?

On the other end of the spectrum were Amazon and Microsoft. Softening demand from shoppers for Amazon led to a miss in reported net sales and a weaker-than-expected sales forecast for the third quarter.?

Microsoft took a hit when its cloud unit’s revenue growth was slower than analysts had hoped for . And news of a pharma company canceling a Microsoft AI deal didn’t help. One executive compared the slide-generation capability of Microsoft's AI tools to "middle school presentations."?

But by Friday, investors had bigger concerns about the state of the economy after data showed unemployment unexpectedly jumped in July .

Hedge funds’ old-turned-new strategy

Sometimes to beat the market you need to be the market.?

That’s the concept behind “portable alpha,” a decades-old strategy gaining momentum on Wall Street. The approach includes mirroring the broad market via a benchmark, like the S&P 500, coupled with an actively managed strategy from a hedge fund.?

The trend is being driven by institutional investors, but hedge funds are happy to oblige amid a difficult fundraising environment.?

Inside the “portable-alpha” mania .

More of this week’s top reads:

• Want to work for Blackstone straight out of college? Here's the best route .
• Don't feel sorry for Linda Yaccarino .
• Tech’s most powerful bromance is bolstered by billions of dollars of deals .
• A software engineer explains how he splits his time between NYC and SF .
• A thief locked a traveler out of his Google account, destroying years of work .?
• Starbucks is trying to make coffee fun again .?
• The poster who sparked the fake JD Vance couch story speaks for the first time .
• London's hedge fund rich are looking to avoid new taxes by relocating to Milan and Dubai. People who have made the move tell us what it's like .

Curated by Dan DeFrancesco and edited by Jordan Parker Erb .

This is a shorter version of our flagship newsletter, which brings you in-depth analysis and summaries of the top stories from Wall Street to Silicon Valley.

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