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Shares in Intel Corporation (Nasdaq: INTC) are plunging in pre-market trading this morning. The stock price fall comes after the chipmaker reported its Q4 2025 earnings after the closing bell yesterday. But its Intels forecast, rather than its latest results, that seems to be driving the stock price’s fall. Heres what you need to know. Intel reports Q4 earnings Yesterday, Intel reported its Q4 2025 and full fiscal 2025 results. For its full fiscal 2025, the company reported $52.9 billion in revenue. That compares with the $53.1 billion in revenue the company brought in during its fiscal 2024. But what investors were mainly interested in were the companys Q4 2025 results and its Q1 2026 forecastthe quarter Intel is now operating in. For Intels Q4 2025, the company reported revenue of $13.7 billion. That was down about 4% from the $14.3 billion the company reported in the same quarter a year earlier. The companys Non-GAAP earnings per share (EPS) were 15 cents. That was an increase from the 13 cents Non-GAAP EPS the company achieved in its Q4 a year earlier. As noted by CNBC, Intels EPS of 15 cents and revenue of $13.7 billion both beat LSEG estimates, which were 8 cents and $13.4 billion, respectively. However, despite these beats, Intel shares fell sharply, with the stock down more than 13% in pre-market trading as of the time of this writing. Intel unable to meet AI data center demand There are two primary reasons for Intels pre-market share price plunge this morning. The first is its Q1 revenue and adjusted EPS forecast. The company said it expects revenue during its first quarter to reach between $11.7 billion and $12.7 billion. It said its adjusted EPS is expected to come in flat. As CNBC notes, Intel’s Q1 revenue forecast range is mostly below the $12.51 billion analysts were expecting. The companys adjusted EPS of 0 cents is also below the 5 cents analysts were expecting. But what has spooked investors the most is the comments Intel made about the demand for its server chips that are used in AI data centers. The good news is that the demand for these chips is extraordinarily high. The bad news, Intel announced, is that the company is unable to meet this demand. As Reuters notes, Intel decides years ahead of time on its manufacturing output, and the company was caught off guard by the AI data center boom. That means Intel is essentially leaving money on the table because it is unable to supply all the chips its customers are demanding. If theres a bright side to Intels forecast, its that the company expects its Q1 supply to be at the lowest level, before improving in Q2 and later. INTC stock plunges after earnings After Intels disappointing Q1 forecast, shares in the company sank after hours yesterday and remain highly depressed as of the time of this writing. Currently, INTC shares are down more than 13.6% in pre-market trading to $46.92 per share. Yet while investors are clearly disappointed in Intels Q1 forecast and the companys current inability to meet customer demand, its still worth noting that Intel shares have had a terrific run as of late. As of yesterdays close, before todays pre-market price drop, INTC shares have seen their price surge by a staggering 47% since the year began. Over the past twelve months, INTC shares have jumped more than 148% as of yesterdays close. What investors will be looking for now is signs that Intel can boost its manufacturing capacity to meet customer demand and thus fully take advantage of the AI boom engulfing the economy.
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E-Commerce
TikTok has finalized a deal to create a new American entity, avoiding the looming threat of a ban in the United States that has been in discussion for years on the platform now used by more than 200 million Americans.The social video platform company signed agreements with major investors including Oracle, Silver Lake and the Emirati investment firm MGX to form the new TikTok U.S. joint venture. The new version will operate under “defined safeguards that protect national security through comprehensive data protections, algorithm security, content moderation and software assurances for U.S. users,” the company said in a statement Thursday. American TikTok users can continue using the same app.President Donald Trump praised the deal in a Truth Social post, thanking Chinese leader Xi Jinping specifically “for working with us and, ultimately, approving the Deal.” Trump add that he hopes “that long into the future I will be remembered by those who use and love TikTok.”Adam Presser, who previously worked as TikTok’s head of operations and trust and safety, will lead the new venture as its CEO. He will work alongside a seven-member, majority-American board of directors that includes TikTok’s CEO Shou Chew.The deal ends years of uncertainty about the fate of the popular video-sharing platform in the United States. After wide bipartisan majorities in Congress passed and President Joe Biden signed a law that would ban TikTok in the U.S. if it did not find a new owner in the place of China’s ByteDance, the platform was set to go dark on the law’s January 2025 deadline. For a several hours, it did. But on his first day in office, President Donald Trump signed an executive order to keep it running while his administration sought an agreement for the sale of the company.“China’s position on TikTok has been consistent and clear,” Guo Jiakun, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson in Beijing, said Friday about the TikTok deal and Trump’s Truth Social post, echoing an earlier statement from the Chinese embassy in Washington.Apart from an emphasis on data protection, with U.S. user data being stored locally in a system run by Oracle, the joint venture will also focus on TikTok’s algorithm. The content recommendation formula, which feeds users specific videos tailored to their preferences and interests, will be retrained, tested and updated on U.S. user data, the company said in its announcement.The algorithm has been a central issue in the security debate over TikTok. China previously maintained the algorithm must remain under Chinese control by law. But the U.S. regulation passed with bipartisan support said any divestment of TikTok must mean the platform cuts ties specifically the algorithm with ByteDance. Under the terms of this deal, ByteDance would license the algorithm to the U.S. entity for retraining.The law prohibits “any cooperation with respect to the operation of a content recommendation algorithm” between ByteDance and a new potential American ownership group, so it is unclear how ByteDance’s continued involvement in this arrangement will play out.“Who controls TikTok in the U.S. has a lot of sway over what Americans see on the app,” said Anupam Chander, a professor of law and technology at Georgetown University.Oracle, Silver Lake and MGX are the three managing investors, each holding a 15% share. Other investors include the investment firm of Michael Dell, the billionaire founder of Dell Technologies. ByteDance retains 19.9% of the joint venture. Associated Press writers Chan Ho-him in Hong Kong and Didi Tang in Washington contributed to this report. Kaitlyn Huamani, AP Technology Reporter
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E-Commerce
For much of the modern corporate era, brand has been treated as surface area. A story told outward. A set of signals designed to persuade, attract, and differentiate. When companies spoke about brand, they were usually talking about perception: how they looked in the market, how they sounded, how they were received. That framing made sense in a world where markets moved a little more slowly, organizations were stable, and leadership could afford to separate strategy from culture, product from meaning, execution from belief. That world no longer exists. Todays organizations operate in a state of near-constant volatility. Strategy shifts quarterly. Teams scale overnight. Culture is tested publicly, in real time. And leadership is no longer judged solely by results, but by coherence and meaning. Do the choices make sense? Do the values hold under pressure? Does the organization know how to behave when the playbook runs out? In this environment, brand cannot remain a visual wrapper. It must become something more fundamental. It must become an operating system. When Brand Stops Being a Story and Starts Being Structure An operating system doesnt exist to impress. It exists to coordinate behavior, allocate resources, and make complex systems usable. It governs whats possible, whats prioritized, and what happens when things break. This is the shift now underway in the most forward-thinking organizationsbrand moving from expression to infrastructure. In this new paradigm, brand is no longer just what the company says. Its how the company defines itself. It shows up in how leaders frame trade-offs, how teams resolve tension, how products evolve, and how culture responds to stress. The question is no longer Is the brand consistent? but Is the brand functional? Does it help people make better decisions faster? Does it reduce friction? Does it offer clarity when data runs out and vision or judgment takes over? If it cant be used under intense pressure and scrutiny, it isnt an operating system at all. The End of the Brand Deck Era and What Comes Next This evolution didnt happen because brand teams failed. It happened because organizations asked brand to do the wrong job. For years, brand was tasked with alignment theater: values posters, messaging frameworks, tone-of-voice documents. Useful artifacts, yes, but largely disconnected from how power, priorities, and incentives actually worked inside the business. Meanwhile, leadership teams struggled with a different problem entirelyfragmentation. Smart people pulling in different directions. Strategy decks multiplying ideas while conviction thinned. Culture initiatives proliferating without changing behavior. The gap between what the brand claimed and how the organization actually operated grew wider. In that gap, trust eroded, employees disengaged, decision-making slowed. And companies found themselves saying the right things while doing the wrong ones. Brand-as-operating-system emerges as a response to that gap. Not as a creative flourish, but as a leadership correction. Brand as a Shared Logic System What does this look like in practice? When brand functions as an operating system, it becomes a shared logic layer across the organization. It provides a common mental model that helps teams answer questions like: What kind of decisions do we make here? What do we prioritize when values collide? How do we act when theres no precedent? What does good actually look like for us? This is where brand moves beyond language and into behavior. Hiring becomes more precise. Not just about skills, but about belief alignment. Innovation becomes more focused. Not just novel, but meaningful. Culture becomes less performative. Not whats celebrated on slides, but whats rewarded in practice. The organization stops asking people to remember the brand and starts enabling them to use it. Why This Is a Leadership Problem, Not a Marketing One Brand-as-OS doesnt install itself. It has to be architected, and that responsibility starts at the top. Brand-as-OS only works when leadership owns it, models it, and enforces it. This is where many organizations stall. Its easier to approve a campaign than to commit to a worldview. Easier to delegate brand than to live inside it. But brand is not neutral. Every organization already has an operating system. The only question is whether its intentional or accidental. Our Future of Brand Report 2026 reveals a clear pattern: companies that treat brand as infrastructure, embedded in systems, rituals, and strategic choices, outperform peers who treat it as a job left to the marketing department. What sets these companies apart isnt better branding. Its leadership that understands brand is the connective tissue between culture, vision, and execution. At Motto, weve seen this firsthand. In companies led by visionaries who treat brand not as a communications tool, but as a cultural code. Leaders who hold brand in the same regard as financial health or product strategy, because they understand its tied to both. And when that code is clear, everything else becomes faster, sharper, and more aligned. What emerges isnt language for the website or a better logo. Its a set of convictions that govern how the company behaves, especially when the answers arent obvious. The company doesnt just look different; it is different. The Cost of Not Making the Shift Organizations that fail to treat brand as infrastructure will continue to suffer from the same symptoms, no matter how many initiatives they launch. Theyll hire exceptional talent only to frustrate it. Theyll produce beautiful work that lacks cohesion. Theyll talk about alignment while reinforcing ambiguity. Most dangerously, theyll confuse activity with progress. In contrast, companies that build brand as an operating system gain something far more valuable than consistency. They gain velocity. Because when people share a belief system, they dont need permission for every move. They can act with confidence, even in uncertainty. The Next Frontier of Leadership Leadership in the coming decade will not be defined by charisma or control but by coherence. The ability to create systems that make sense to the humans inside them. Bran-as-operating-system is not a trend. Its a response to complexity. A way of giving organizations a spine when everything else is in flux. The leaders who understand this wont hand off brand to marketing and hope it holds. They wont treat vision, culture, and brand as separate lines of effort, but as one integrated system of belief, behavior, and direction. Theyll design for alignment from the inside out, not just to look good but to operate better. Because the future of brand leadership belongs to those who do more than tell the story. They architect the system. They run the code. They build companies where vision is felt, culture is lived, and brand is the connective tissue in it all. Not just brands with something to say. Brands built to lead.
Category:
E-Commerce
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