Breakfast News: Week in Review

1. The Cheapest AI Yet Squeezes the Companies Selling It

Source: Image created by Jester AI.

Tokens serve as the billing unit that AI models use for their services. On Monday, a million tokens could be purchased for $0.97. That's a record low, and less than half the summer high, according to Silicon Data's index of token prices. Low-priced tokens benefit anyone executing queries but create difficulties for those selling the resulting answers.

• Prices fall; bills don't: Cheap Chinese open-source models and price cuts at the biggest labs helped drive the slide. Those labs' computing bills are already committed, so they don't shrink when a query gets cheaper.
• Two of those labs want to sell shares: Anthropic and OpenAI both filed confidentially for initial public offerings this summer. Each has to pitch investors on a business whose price per unit is falling.
• Microsoft will soon make volume visible: For the first time, Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) will report revenue in dollars for Azure, the computing power it rents to other companies. That number moves with how much customers actually use.

The build-out pays off in the future only if usage increases faster than the price per unit declines. Microsoft's new Azure line will show whether that's happening.

2. Nvidia Is Spending Like the Easy Years Are Over

Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA) confirmed on Thursday that it will spend $13 billion to buy Hugging Face, the hub where developers publish and test open-source AI models. Nvidia once sold every chip it made to buyers with no alternative. Now those buyers have one, so Nvidia is spending to stay central anyway.

• The seller made the first call: Hugging Face CEO Clément Delangue said he approached Nvidia over the summer, not the reverse; even a thriving platform felt it needed a giant's backing. The deal is expected to close in the first half of 2027, pending regulatory approval.
• Nvidia wrote another check on Monday: It put $3.5 billion into Taiwanese chip designer MediaTek, whose parts will plug into Nvidia systems. That keeps Nvidia in the chain even when a buyer picks a rival chip.
• Nvidia holds the lease under someone else's deal: Hut 8 (NASDAQ: HUT) will develop the Texas data center behind the $35 billion Anthropic-Lambda deal. Nvidia backs Lambda, leases the site, and sells the chips that fill it.

More of Nvidia's sales now come from customers it helped fund. Owning it from here means trusting Nvidia to earn its keep across the whole stack.

3. Nvidia's Beat and a Telling Purchase

Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA) beat again. Revenue topped $96 billion, more than double a year ago, and the stock is up 9% since reporting. What lifted its shares? The CFO guiding for 70% revenue growth in 2028. But our analyst Emily Flippen calls Nvidia "a lagging indicator of the AI buildout, not a leading one." Its reported revenue just confirms spending that the market already knew about. But the more revealing news came Thursday, when Nvidia revealed what's on its shopping list.

• The deal: Nvidia reportedly agreed to buy Hugging Face, the open-source hub where developers publish and test AI models, for about $13 billion. It's Nvidia's largest acquisition ever, at roughly 86 times the target's sales.
• Why that price isn't incredibly high: Nothing is expensive against Nvidia's scale. Flippen notes Nvidia could buy Hugging Face seven times over using cash already set aside to repurchase its own stock. She also flags this as a defensive hedge. Nvidia's biggest customers are starting to design their own chips. Whoever owns the platform developers download models from can steer them toward rival hardware. Nvidia is paying to keep that door shut.

We've recommended Nvidia more than 30 times and never sold. In fact, a $10,000 stake invested in 2005, when we first recommended Nvidia in Stock Advisor, is worth about $13 million today. But the build-out that made it can't grow forever, and this deal is a tell that Nvidia knows the easy years are behind it. What we're watching now is whether it can defend its lead as well as it once extended it.

3. Snowflake, Sezzle, and FIGS All Sounded Like Bad Ideas

Three of this week's Breakfast News statements went back to an earlier recommendation. We issued each one before the market came around.

• Snowflake went nowhere for five years. Our first Rule Breakers recommendation of Snowflake (NYSE: SNOW), May 2021 at $245.15, is up 45% and trails the S&P 500. Hidden Gems recommended it in June 2022 at $138.24. That call is up about 158%. It's still a Buy in Hidden Gems and Rule Breakers.
• Sezzle carried its industry's stigma. Wall Street treated buy now, pay later as a subprime accident waiting to happen. We first recommended Sezzle (NASDAQ: SEZL) in August 2024 at $21.32, and shares have more than quintupled. It turns 61% of revenue into free cash flow, a software-like rate.
• FIGS is the newest of the three. Scrubs maker FIGS (NYSE: FIGS) disappointed for years after its 2021 IPO. We recommended it in Rule Breakers in June 2026 at $12.22. Revenue rose nearly 29% year over year in the second quarter.

Sezzle paid for its industry's reputation. Snowflake and FIGS had their own bad years. None of that told you what any of those businesses is worth today.

4. Uber Is Lobbying Against the Robotaxis It's Funding

Uber (NYSE: UBER) said Wednesday that it will cut 10% of its workforce, roughly 3,300 jobs, to flatten management. CEO Dara Khosrowshahi framed it as freeing capacity for a planned $10 billion-plus push into autonomous vehicles. He didn't blame AI, unlike most tech CEOs who cut staff this year.

• Then Uber lobbied to slow robotaxis down: It joined driver unions in New Jersey and Washington, D.C., to push for rules that keep human drivers in most self-driving rides. In New Jersey, it wants at least 85% of rides to have a person behind the wheel. Alphabet's (NASDAQ: GOOG) Waymo says the 85% minimum solves a problem that doesn't exist.
• The rule would bite Waymo hardest: One tracker counts just over 200 Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) vehicles registered as unsupervised, against Waymo's 4,000 across 14 cities. Tesla teased a Cybercab event Wednesday, and shares rose 5.5% that day.

The Rule Breakers recommendation is outperforming the S&P 500 by more than 250% since July 2022. Uber is spending $10 billion on a fleet it doesn't have yet. The thesis needs the rules to slow Waymo down long enough for Uber to close that gap.

5. MongoDB Beat, Raised Guidance, and Fell 15%

MongoDB (NASDAQ: MDB) sells the database where applications keep their data. Its Atlas cloud service is now where AI coding agents read and write live data, too. Our Rule Breakers recommendation reported Tuesday night. The quarter beat estimates, management raised its full-year outlook, and shares fell almost 15%.

• Growth accelerated, and margins followed: Revenue rose 30% year over year in the fiscal second quarter, the best in several years. Adjusted operating margin reached 24%, up from 15%.
• Then management forecast a slower third quarter: That gave investors an excuse to sell after a string of blowout quarters.
• The payoff runs a step behind the build-out. Software like MongoDB's gets used after the servers are installed. It launched a service connecting coding agents like Claude Code and OpenAI's Codex to live Atlas data. Contracted future revenue climbed 91% to $1.52 billion, so the demand is booked.

These results show that the market has stopped paying in advance for AI demand. It wants revenue collected rather than contracted. Holding MongoDB means trusting those signed commitments to arrive on schedule.

6. The Week Ahead

The August jobs report landed this morning. Strong hiring makes a rate hike more likely, and higher rates hit expensive AI stocks hardest. Those stocks are priced on profits that won't arrive for years. Federal Reserve Governor Christopher Waller said on Thursday that he'd lean toward holding steady this month. Odds of a September hike fell to 50.4% from 63.2% a day earlier, close to a coin flip.

• Oil keeps inflation in the picture: Crude near $92 keeps the pressure on, and consumer and producer price reports land next week.
• Then management forecast a slower third quarter: That gave investors an excuse to sell after a string of blowout quarters.
• Four recommendations report: Chewy (NYSE: CHWY) reports on Wednesday morning and AeroVironment (NASDAQ: AVAV) on Wednesday afternoon. Oracle (NYSE: ORCL) and Adobe (NASDAQ: ADBE) follow on Thursday afternoon.

7. Your Take

MongoDB beat estimates this week, and its stock fell 15% anyway. When a company's payoff keeps sliding further out, how do you decide whether to keep holding or revisit your thesis?

Debate with friends and family, or become a member to hear what your fellow Fools are saying!