Top Stories This Morning: Nvidia to Scale Back Operations in China; Apple Fails to Impress Investors

Nvidia has demanded that its cloud customers worldwide reduce their reliance on Chinese companies. Apple’s revenue forecast for the holiday quarter exceeded Wall Street’s expectations, but the company warned that its gross margin would be lower than expected. Read about these and other topics in our roundup of key events as of the morning of November 3.

Nvidia has demanded that its cloud computing customers reduce their reliance on Chinese companies, the Financial Times reported, citing sources. The AI chipmaker has instructed its customers to ensure that at least 51% of their services are sold to companies outside China.

The new requirements apply to Nvidia customers worldwide, but will affect only future contracts and will not impact existing lease agreements. In recent years, the U.S. has restricted shipments of Nvidia’s advanced AI chips to China on national security grounds and has cracked down on their smuggling, the newspaper notes.

Apple reported earnings and revenue for its fourth fiscal quarter that exceeded analysts' expectations, thanks to strong iPhone sales, according to Yahoo Finance. This was the company's first earnings report since John Turnus took over as CEO, succeeding Tim Cook.

Revenue from iPhone sales reached $57.58 billion, compared with market estimates of $56.48 billion; Mac sales brought in $10.79 billion, while analysts had expected only $9.69 billion. Revenue from services totaled $31.57 billion, virtually matching Wall Street’s forecasts. However, revenue in Greater China fell short of expectations: $17.54 billion versus a consensus estimate of $18.75 billion. In addition, the growth rate of total revenue slowed compared to the previous reporting period.

The company forecasts that the metric will increase by 7–10% during the current holiday quarter—more than analysts had expected. However, Apple warned that gross margin will be lower than forecast. “The decline in gross margin on device sales remains one of the key challenges in the short term,” wrote Bloomberg Intelligence analysts Anurag Rana and Josh Christensen.

Apple has also faced another challenge: high investor expectations. The rise in its stock price over recent months, driven in part by the company’s reputation as a safe-haven asset, has increased its market capitalization by approximately $1 trillion. Against this backdrop, its stock price fell by about 3% in after-hours trading on November 2.

Walt Disney plans to cut thousands of jobs and has instructed some executives to achieve annual cost savings of 20%, Bloomberg reported, citing sources. The savings will be achieved through both layoffs and cuts to other expenses. Some divisions, including theme parks, television networks, and the film studio, may be hit harder than others.

CEO Josh D'Amaro plans to allocate a portion of the savings to film and television production, technology, and the development of theme parks and the cruise business. In recent years, Disney has already cut costs by billions of dollars and laid off thousands of employees. At the end of the last fiscal year, the company employed 231,000 people. The layoffs are taking place amid declining revenues from traditional television and a slowdown in the growth of streaming service subscribers, the agency notes.

Palantir's revenue from commercial customers in the U.S. rose 148% year-over-year in the third quarter to $984 million, surpassing revenue from U.S. government contracts ($953 million, up 96%), according to CNBC. The growth is driven by increased business demand for artificial intelligence tools. The company’s total revenue nearly doubled, reaching a record $2.31 billion compared to the expected $2.18 billion. Adjusted earnings per share came in at $0.44, compared with a forecast of $0.41, and net income more than doubled to $1.13 billion. Despite the strong results, Palantir’s stock fell by about 3% in after-hours trading.

The company raised its forecast for U.S. commercial revenue in 2026 from $3.42 billion to more than $3.56 billion. Palantir now expects total annual revenue to be approximately $8.53 billion, and fourth-quarter revenue to be approximately $2.65 billion.

North Korea has rejected U.S. accusations that it was involved in the hacking of the Binance cryptocurrency exchange, which resulted in the theft of approximately $6.3 billion, calling them a “serious political provocation,” according to CNBC. The sister of North Korean leader Kim Yo-jong accused Washington of attempting to portray North Korea as a “state of cybercriminals.” Earlier, the FBI linked the attack to the hacker group TraderTraitor, which is believed to be affiliated with Pyongyang.

According to the analytics firm Elliptic, in the first four days following the hack, the hackers used approximately 12,000 wallets across 11 blockchains and carried out more than 40,000 transactions in an attempt to cover their tracks regarding the stolen funds. Of the $6.43 billion, approximately $2.85 billion (44%) has been frozen or recovered, while another $3.24 billion remains in addresses linked to the attack. Binance reported that it has already covered approximately 95% of the affected assets and is gradually resuming cryptocurrency withdrawals.

Asian tech stocks came under pressure on Tuesday amid investor concerns about artificial intelligence spending and corporate earnings, Reuters reports. The MSCI Asia Pacific Index (excluding Japan) fell 1.4% to its lowest level since October 23. South Korea’s Kospi fell as much as 4.1%, Taiwan’s index dropped 3.3%, and Chinese stocks declined 1.4%. Analysts at Bank of America noted the ongoing capital outflow from South Korea and Taiwan due to doubts about the sustainability of the technology cycle.

— Trading on the Tokyo Stock Exchange is suspended due to holidays.

— Hong Kong's Hang Seng Index rose 0.1%, while mainland China's CSI 300 Index fell 1%.

— Australia's S&P/ASX 200 rose 0.3%.

— Nasdaq 100 futures were down 0.2%, S&P 500 futures were down 0.3%, and Dow Jones Industrial Average futures were down 0.6%.

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