Did Apple's New CEO Fumble His Debut?

Apple beat estimates in John Ternus’s first earnings call, but memory costs loomed. Investors told Anthropic to price its IPO near $1.5T. Google banned a TV box maker for preloading malware. Binance detailed its $6.3B hack. Anthropic said RSI might be imminent.

• Apple reports Q4 revenue up 12% YoY to $114.48B, above $113.39B est., China revenue up 21% to $17.5B, below $18.9B est., in John Ternus’ first earnings report (Business Wire)
• Apple guided Q1 sales up 7–10% YoY, above the 6% Wall Street expected, but shares slipped ~3% after-hours on a 45–46% margin forecast and Ternus calling memory pricing “unprecedented” (FT)
• Opinion: Ternus’s tight-lipped first earnings call missed a chance to talk up the iPhone Duo, Apple’s AI-agent moat, and capex at just 6.5% of Meta’s (Bloomberg)
• Sources: institutional investors told Anthropic that its IPO valuation should be ~$1.5T to $1.6T, below the $2T range, citing factors like a tech stock selloff (WSJ)
• Google severs ties with and bans Android TV box maker Videostrong after finding it intentionally preloaded malware to open a backdoor to control the XCPE botnet (9to5Google)
• Binance says North Korean hackers stole $6.3B through a months-long scheme with fake LinkedIn job interviews and an ad campaign to deliver malicious software (Fortune)
• S-1: Anthropic says it may “imminently meet” its RSI threshold and may not identify “a significant acceleration” in its development until after it has occurred (TechCrunch)
• Anthropic’s internal data shows Claude went from leading 1% of its AI R&D work in March to 26% by August; co-founder Jack Clark now thinks RSI arrives in 2027, not 2028 (WSJ)

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