Palantir’s stock is on the way back up despite investors’ broad skepticism about AI.
The company’s shares surged 29% Tuesday after it surpassed estimates in its latest earnings report, boosting CEO Alex Karp’s net worth to $15.3 billion. The company disclosed a 93% year-over-year boost in overall revenue, and analysts from Citi wrote that the company’s results “further weaken the bear case around rising AI competition.”
Shares of Palantir are now only slightly down this year overall, by less than 2%, erasing most of a monthslong decline.
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First Up
- Hackers stole more than $100 million in bitcoin as a result of a firmware flaw in hardware wallets, and more attacks targeting digital assets are ongoing, according to crypto research firm Galaxy Research.
- Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Tuesday that the U.S. could strike a deal with Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz “today or tomorrow,” causing oil prices to fall.
- Trump-linked cryptocurrency mining company American Bitcoin agreed to pay $2.5 million to settle a Justice Department allegation accusing it of improperly obtaining a pandemic relief loan.
Business + Finance
As consumers trim their spending to weather rising prices, McDonald’s appears to be feeling the impacts, with the fast food mainstay reporting mixed results in its earnings call Tuesday. The chain is “meaningfully overindexed to lower income households,” according to Consumer Edge analyst Michael Gunther, though his firm found the cyclospora outbreak also contributed to weaker spending at “limited-service restaurants” last month.
Money + Politics
Blanche testifies during a House hearing
Getty Images
The Senate Judiciary Committee approved Todd Blanche for attorney general after Sens. John Cornyn, R-Texas, and Thom Tillis, R-N.C., initially withheld their votes and demanded the Justice Department document that it wouldn’t pursue its $1.8 billion anti-weaponization fund. The senators agreed to vote for Blanche after he issued orders Sunday that said the fund was dead and restricted the scope of the immunity agreement.
Travel + Lifestyle
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy’s road trip reality series has yet to launch despite garnering millions from corporate sponsors—but the same firms spent even more on lobbying Congress last year. The sponsors of “The Great American Road Trip,” including Boeing and Toyota, collectively spent more than $100 million in federal lobbying in 2025.
Featured Story
Silicon Valley’s Other China Problem: It’s Training Their AI
The U.S. has spent years trying to keep advanced AI chips out of China. It paid far less attention to another scarce input in the AI race: the expert-made datasets that teach models how to reason through spreadsheets, code, science and white-collar work.
Silicon Valley startups like Mercor and Surge AI that sell high quality training datasets to OpenAI, Anthropic and the U.S. government are also selling them to China’s leading AI labs, according to documents and communications reviewed by Forbes.
It is packaged human expertise produced by specialist networks and shaped by task designs, grading rubrics and quality controls—the expensive machinery that teaches models to handle difficult professional tasks.
While the U.S. has long prohibited China from buying the chips that power America’s top tier AI models, it’s largely overlooked the expertise data required to train them. The business is worth hundreds of millions of dollars annually and it’s helping Chinese AI models close the gap with their American rivals.
“After the compute needed to train the models, good quality data is the most important thing,” Nathan Lambert, a former research scientist at the Allen Institute for AI, told Forbes.
WHY IT MATTERS
“As the U.S. and China vie for AI dominance, some of the same Silicon Valley startups supplying OpenAI, Anthropic, and the federal government are quietly training Beijing’s top labs—effectively arming both sides of the AI arms race,” says Forbes senior writer Anna Tong.
MORE AI’s New Training Data: Your Old Work Slacks And Emails
Facts + Comments
“Spider-Man: Brand New Day” crossed the $1 billion global gross mark on Tuesday, the second-fastest film to ever hit the milestone. The Tom Holland-led blockbuster has blown past expectations:
Six: The number of days it took the film to gross $1 billion, one more day than “Avengers: Endgame” in 2019
$360 million: How much the film grossed in its domestic opening weekend, setting a U.S. box office record
$2 billion: The mark the movie is expected to reach before the end of its theatrical window, an achievement only reached by seven other films
Strategy + Success
If you feel like your career is no longer moving forward, you’re not alone: Research shows nearly one in four professionals experiences a mid-career stall. Review how much your pay has grown over the last three to five years, and consider whether you’ve made meaningful progress toward your goal. Have a conversation with your manager about your development, while also testing the waters for potential external roles.
Video
Quiz
The Trump administration is considering a new fee to permit international students to work in the U.S. after graduation. How much is the potential fee?
A. $5,000
B. $10,000
C. $100,000
D. $500,000
Check your answer.
Thanks for reading! This edition of Forbes Daily was edited by Sarah Whitmire and Chris Dobstaff.
