Main by morning: Nvidia has pulled out of Arm Capital, Cathie Wood's fund in a prolonged slump

Nvidia finally exited Arm (one of the world's leading fabless processor architecture developers for mobile devices and servers), in parallel extending its multi-year partnership with Meta to supply millions of graphics processing units (GPUs) and central processing units (CPUs) for AI datacenters. Microsoft announced plans to invest $50 billion in AI development in the Global South. About these and other topics - in our review of key events by the morning of February 18.

Nvidia has sold its last 1.1 million shares in British Arm for about $140 million and exited the company entirely, Bloomberg reports. The deal was closed in the fourth quarter of last year, according to a regulatory filing.

This ended the story of Nvidia's failed $40 billion purchase of Arm in 2020, which was blocked by regulators. After the deal was terminated in 2022, Arm, majority owned by SoftBank, held an IPO. Nvidia remains an active investor in the technology sector and is betting on accelerating AI adoption, the agency notes.

Nvidia and Meta have announced a multi-year expansion of their partnership: the chip maker will supply millions of Blackwell and Rubin GPUs, as well as CPUs and networking solutions for Meta's data centers, where they will be used to train and run AI models, Yahoo Finance writes. The company will also deploy servers based on the Grace chip and eventually the Vera chip, while WhatsApp will implement Confidential Computing technology (protecting data while it is being processed).

The deal comes amid declining investor interest in AI stocks and concerns about infrastructure costs. The securities of Meta and Microsoft have slipped significantly since the beginning of the year, as well as shares of chipmakers, as the market discusses whether powerful GPUs will remain a key technology or whether they will be partially replaced by more specialized solutions, the portal explains.

Six years after Berkshire Hathaway sold all of its newspapers and called the print media industry "over," the investment firm has revealed a new investment - about $350 million in shares of The New York Times (about 5.07 million shares at the end of 2025), AP reports, citing Berkshire's quarterly report. This is Berkshire's return to the media sector after abandoning newspapers in 2020 and recognizes the Times' transformation into a digital business with games, a sports platform and a large audience of subscribers, the agency points out.

The same report shows that Berkshire increased its stake in Chevron and continued to reduce its positions in Bank of America and Apple, as well as reducing its stake in Amazon. The deals came during a period of CEO changes - Warren Buffett handed over the post to Greg Abel, while remaining chairman of the board of directors.

Microsoft said at an AI summit in New Delhi that it plans to invest $50 billion by the end of the decade to expand access to artificial intelligence technology in the Global South - developing and emerging economies predominantly in the southern hemisphere, Reuters writes.

The company is already aggressively building a presence in the region: last year it announced a $17.5 billion investment in India, strengthening its bet on one of the world's fastest-growing digital markets, the agency notes.

Japan plans to invest up to $36 billion in oil, gas and critical minerals projects in the U.S., the first tranche of a $550 billion trade agreement with U.S. President Donald Trump's administration, Bloomberg writes. According to Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi, the initiative aims to strengthen sustainable supply chains and economic security, including energy, AI and strategic resources.

The largest project is a gas-fired power plant in Ohio with a capacity of 9.2 GW, in which Tokyo may invest up to $33 bln, the agency points out. The project will be headed by SB Energy (SoftBank structure), Toshiba and Hitachi have also expressed interest. At full load, the plant will be able to generate a volume of energy comparable to nine nuclear reactors or the consumption of about 7.4 million households in the largest U.S. power grid.

ARK Innovation ETF (ARKK), Cathie Wood's flagship fund, recorded a record 10-day streak of declines and is down more than 50% over the past five years, while the Nasdaq 100 is up about 80%, Bloomberg writes. The fund's assets have shrunk from a peak of $28 billion in 2021 to about $6 billion, and ARKK has lost 9% since the beginning of the year and is facing outflows.

Investors who bet on "disruptive" areas - electric cars, genomics and fintech - have suffered amid rising interest rates and cooling interest in risky stocks. That said, the fund's performance has been strong over longer horizons, with a three-year annualized return of more than 18% and a ten-year annualized return of more than 17%, making it one of the best-performing mid-cap growth funds tracked by Morningstar, the agency said.

- Japan's broad Topix index was up 1.22% on Feb. 18, with the Nikkei 225 adding 1.2%.

- The Hong Kong Stock Exchange, Shanghai Stock Exchange and Shenzhen Stock Exchange are not trading due to holidays.

- The Korean bourse is also not trading due to holidays.

- Australia's S&P/ASX 200 rose 0.54%.

- S&P 500 futures were up 0.19%, Nasdaq Composite futures were up 0.24% and Dow Jones Industrial Average exchange-traded contracts were little changed.

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