Highlights for the morning: new US sanctions, Meta cuts AI staff, IBM grows, Reddit sues

Brent crude oil futures soared almost 6% after new US sanctions affected Russia's largest crude producers. Meta laid off about 600 employees from its AI division. IBM posted gains: beating Wall Street forecasts, raising its full-year revenue guidance and reporting a record $9.5 billion in AI orders in its portfolio, while shares plummeted. These and other topics - in the review of key events for the morning of October 23.

The administration of US President Donald Trump has imposed sanctions against Russia's largest oil companies - Rosneft and Lukoil, Bloomberg reports. The U.S. Finance Ministry said that the measures are related to "Russia's lack of serious steps toward a peaceful settlement in Ukraine." This is the first major package of financial restrictions against the Russian economy during Trump's new term and a sharp reversal of his previous soft policy toward Moscow, the agency said.

The decision caused a rise in oil prices: Brent futures jumped more than 5% to over $64 per barrel. According to Bloomberg estimates, Rosneft and Lukoil account for almost half of Russia's oil exports, and revenues from the energy sector bring in about a quarter of the country's budget. Despite the sanctions, Trump said he hoped they would be short-term and the conflict would end soon.

The US president had previously repeatedly postponed sanctions and met personally with Vladimir Putin in Alaska, but made no progress. The new move, previously considered by the previous Joe Biden administration, was a risky decision: it could hit global fuel prices, but it also shows that Trump's patience with the Kremlin is coming to an end, Bloomberg points out.

Meta will lay off about 600 employees from its AI units, including its FAIR infrastructure and research teams, as part of a restructuring and reduction in management layers, CNBC reports. The cuts do not affect a new elite group, Superintelligence Labs, led by Meta's AI director Alexander Wang and former GitHub CEO Nat Friedman. The decision reflects Mark Zuckerberg's reliance on recently hired specialists rather than "legacy" teams, the channel noted.

According to CNBC, Zuckerberg was unhappy with Meta's AI progress after the tepid reception of the Llama 4 model. The massive investment in Scale AI and the creation of Superintelligence Labs should accelerate the development of more powerful models and optimize competition with OpenAI and Google. After the layoffs, Meta Superintelligence Labs will have less than 3,000 employees.

The company also announced a $27 billion deal with Blue Owl Capital to fund the giant Hyperion data center in Louisiana, which Zuckerberg said will "cover a significant portion of the Manhattan area." Meta will report quarterly earnings next week.

IBM reported results for the third quarter and managed to beat analysts' expectations: adjusted earnings per share amounted to $2.65 with a forecast of $2.45, and revenue - $16.33 billion against expected $16.09 billion, writes CNBC. The year-to-date figure was up 9%. Net income reached $1.74 billion against a $330 million loss a year earlier related to pension costs.

The company adjusted its revenue guidance: it now expects growth of "more than 5%" (previously it was "at least 5%"), and raised its free cash flow target to $14 billion. IBM CEO Arvind Krishna said its AI order book topped $9.5 billion, up $2 billion from the second quarter.

Growth was seen in all key areas, with software revenue up 10% to $7.21 billion, consulting revenue up $5.3 billion, and infrastructure, including mainframes, up 17% to $3.6 billion. The board of directors approved a quarterly dividend of $1.68 per share.

Online forum Reddit has filed a lawsuit against Perplexity AI, accusing the company of illegally collecting user posts to train language models, CNBC reports. The lawsuit, filed in New York federal court, also names three Perplexity partners - Oxylabs, AWMProxy and SerpApi - whom Reddit accuses of hiding identities and disguising web scrapers as regular users.

Perplexity has denied the allegations, calling Reddit's actions "extortion" and an "attack on the open internet." The company claims it does not train models on Reddit data, but merely quotes and summarizes public discussions. Reddit, on the other hand, claims Perplexity's number of links to its posts increased 40-fold after sending a letter demanding that it stop the violations.

The lawsuit was another episode in the growing conflict between content platforms and AI companies using other people's data. Reddit already has a similar case against Anthropic and is actively monetizing access to its data by signing licenses with OpenAI and Google that bring in up to 10% of its revenue.

- The broad Japanese Topix index was falling by 0.65%. The benchmark Nikkei 225 was losing about 1.5%.

- In South Korea, the Kospi and Kosdaq indices were down 1%.

- Australia's S&P/ASX 200 was little changed.

- Futures on the Nasdaq 100 were up more than 0.1%, the S&P 500 was adding less than 0.1%, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down within 0.2%. Futures recovered the losses they suffered after the close of the main trading on October 22.

This article was AI-translated and verified by a human editor