Highlights of the morning: the Fed kept rates on hold, OpenAI doubled revenue, Figma IPOs

Microsoft and Meta shares rose sharply after posting strong quarterly results. OpenAI, a key player in generative AI, doubled its revenue to $12 billion year-to-date and is preparing for a new $30 billion investment round. Meanwhile, the U.S. Federal Reserve kept its policy rate at 4.25-4.5% for the fifth consecutive time, despite pressure from Donald Trump for an immediate cut to support lending. On these and other topics - in our review of key events for the morning of July 31.

The U.S. Federal Reserve on Wednesday for the fifth consecutive time left its key interest rate unchanged at a range of 4.25-4.5%. This came amid deepening divisions within the regulator and pressure from Donald Trump, who is pushing for a sharp rate cut,  writes Yahoo Finance.

For the first time in more than 30 years, two members of the Fed's Board of Governors voted against the majority decision, with Christopher Waller and Michelle Bowman in favor of a 0.25pc rate cut.

Fed Chairman Jerome Powell emphasized at a press conference that no decisions on what to do with the rate at the September meeting have been made yet. He added that the regulator will have to evaluate a lot of data before taking further action.

Responding to questions about the two dissenters to the decision, Powell said: "It's important that everyone explains their position clearly - and that was the case today. Overall, it was a good meeting.

The Fed once again ignored calls from Trump and the White House for an immediate rate cut. The president the day before once again demanded in Truth Social that the rate be cut by three percentage points, arguing it would save money on servicing the national debt and make mortgages more affordable. He wrote, "Too late! NEED TO CUT THE RATE NOW! There is no inflation! Let people buy and refinance homes!"

Nevertheless, Powell stuck to his point: he said the impact of Trump's duties on inflation and the U.S. economy is still unclear and more time is needed to analyze it. "This is still an early stage," he noted.

Powell added that inflation remains a source of concern. He said a premature rate cut could result in inflation never being fully suppressed, and excessive delay could hurt the labor market. 

Figma, a design software developer has set its IPO price at $33 per share - above the expected range, which was $30-32, reports CNBC. The company's shares will begin trading on the New York Stock Exchange on Thursday under the ticker FIG. The offering raises $1.2 billion, with most of the money going to current shareholders. After the IPO, Figma is valued at $19.3 billion.  

In an updated prospectus, Figma said revenue for the quarter ended June rose to $247 million to $250 million, up from $177.2 million a year earlier - a 40% increase in the midpoint of the range. Operating profit for the quarter, Figma expects to range from a loss of $500,000 to a profit of $2.5 million. A year ago, the loss was $894.3 million - mostly due to stock compensation costs. For the quarter ended in March, revenue rose 46% to $228.2 million and net income tripled to $44.9 million.

The club of companies with market capitalizations above $4 trillion has a second member - at least according to the results of over-the-counter trading. Following the release of a report that beat expectations, Microsoft's stock rose 8 percent, raising the software giant's market value to about $4.1 trillion, reports CNBC. If the gains continue in Thursday's major trading, Microsoft will officially join Nvidia, which reached $4 trillion in capitalization for the first time earlier this month.

Microsoft's revenue grew 18%, the fastest pace in three years, driven by the rapid growth of its Azure cloud business. For the first time, Microsoft disclosed Azure revenue in monetary terms: total revenue from Azure and other cloud services in fiscal 2025 exceeded $75 billion, up 34% year-over-year.

At the close of trading Wednesday, Microsoft shares were showing a 22% YTD gain, outperforming the S&P 500 index, which added 8%. The stock hit a record high of $513.71 on July 25 and topped $553 in the postmarket.

Nvidia and Microsoft - the biggest beneficiaries of the AI boom - have overtaken Apple in terms of capitalization. Now in third place with $3.2 trillion, Apple's stock has fallen 17% since the start of the year amid investor concerns that the iPhone maker is falling behind in the artificial intelligence race. Apple will report quarterly earnings on Thursday after the market closes.

Among tech giants, Nvidia remains the 2025 leader with the stock up 33%. The company's GPUs are the basis for large language models developed by Microsoft, OpenAI, Google, Meta and others, and are actively used in the data centers of these same companies.

Nvidia is expected to release its results at the end of August.

Meta Platforms is aggressively ramping up investments in artificial intelligence, building on strong profits from its advertising business. The company's executives said now is the right time to invest in the future of technology, reports Bloomberg. Meta shares rose more than 10% in the post-market after the company released a quarterly report that beat analysts' expectations.

According to Meta CFO Susan Lee, investments in AI are already yielding tangible results: new AI features integrated into advertising products have begun to generate "meaningful" revenue. For the current quarter, Meta expects sales of $47.5-50.5 billion, above the average analyst forecast of $46.2 billion.

The company raised the lower end of its capital expenditure forecast for 2025 and gave preliminary guidance on spending for 2026 - cost growth will continue at an accelerated pace, especially in relation to AI infrastructure needs and scarce technical talent. Meta is betting on cloud computing, data centers and generative AI talent.

CEO Mark Zuckerberg said AI has already significantly improved the effectiveness of its advertising algorithms, allowing the company to increase its average cost per impression. Hargreaves Lansdown analyst Matt Britzman said the quarter was a "resounding success" for Meta, despite the risks from rising costs.

At the time of the report, Meta shares were up 19% YTD.

It has also been revealed that Meta has renamed its internal AI division to Meta Superintelligence Labs, which is now headed by Alexander Wang, the former CEO of Scale AI. Wang joined Meta after Zuckerberg acquired a 49% stake in Scale AI for $14.3 billion.

While Wall Street was previously skeptical of Meta's bet on meta-universe and its loss-making Reality Labs division (second-quarter losses of $4.5 billion on revenue of $370 million), investors are taking a positive view of AI investments, especially amid similar moves by Microsoft and Alphabet, which have also sharply increased spending on AI development.

Forrester analyst Mike Prue wrote that the current race for AI leadership resembles the races for PCs, browsers, search engines and smartphones, but is much faster: "AI is accelerating its own evolution - and those with deeper pockets will win."

OpenAI, the developer of ChatGPT, according to data from The Information, has doubled its revenue for the first seven months of 2025, bringing the annualized figure to $12 billion. That means the company is now generating about $1 billion a month. Reuters has not yet been able to confirm those figures, and OpenAI declined to comment.

The Microsoft-backed company has about 700 million active users per week using ChatGPT in both consumer and business products.

OpenAI is also reported to have raised its 2025 cash burn forecast to $8 billion - $1 billion more than previously estimated.

The company is raising funding in the second phase of a $30 billion investment round. Investors include Sequoia Capital and Tiger Global Management, which are reportedly putting in hundreds of millions of dollars. In addition, Japanese conglomerate SoftBank is close to finalizing the deal. SoftBank's total agreed investment in OpenAI has reached $32 billion since its first investment in the fall of 2024.

- Japan's broad Topix index was up 0.28% at the open.

- The benchmark Nikkei 225 was up 0.21%.

- In South Korea, the Kospi index fell 0.14%, while the Kosdaq small-company index was unchanged. 

- Australia's S&P/ASX 200 was falling 0.53 percent.

- S&P 500 futures were up 0.95%, the Nasdaq 100 was up 1.35% and Dow Jones Industrial Average futures were adding 0.30%.

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