Your Evening Briefing

December 15, 2025

Markets droop as AI credit fears grow and jobs report looms

The markets had a case of the Mondays and drooped as the last full week of trading for 2025 kicked off. All three major indexes finished down for the day.

Investors went risk-off ahead of tomorrow’s release of delayed jobs and payroll data and Thursday’s CPI report, all of which will influence the odds of how many rate cuts the Federal Reserve may enact in the new year.

A growing concern around AI credit risk also weighed on stocks, with Broadcom and Oracle both continuing their declines from last week. Tech and energy S&P sector ETFs saw the biggest declines while health care topped the leaderboard.

Stocks that moved higher:

Tesla rallied following news that its Austin Robotaxi fleet was now testing driverless cars without safety monitors — which seemed like concrete momentum toward Tesla’s autonomous future to investors.
GameStop rose on bullish options activity, “Big Short” investor Michael Burry’s promised post on the meme stock, and its poaching of the artist formerly known as “Best Buy Rilie”
GE Vernova ticked up as Evercore ISI initiated coverage of the company with an “outperform” rating.
Nvidia rose following its launch of an updated edition of its open models, the Nemotron 3.

Stocks that moved lower:

While Nvidia itself gained on the day, three companies, Applied Digital, CoreWeave, and Nebius, that the chip designer holds major positions in, all fell as worries of AI credit risk spreads.
And what’s good for Tesla is often bad for its competitors — Lyft and Uber both suffered following the report that it began testing its driverless cars without safety monitors.
Crypto had a rough session, and bitcoin’s slide dragged down a host of crypto-sensitive stocks, including Cipher Mining, CleanSpark, Hut 8, TeraWulf, and IREN.
ServiceNow tumbled on a report that it’s nearing a deal to buy cybersecurity startup Armis for up to $7 billion.

iRobot files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy just 11 days after its record one-day gain

Shares of iRobot recently booked their biggest one-day gain on record, rising 74% on December 3 on the heels of a Politico report that the Trump administration was planning on going “all in” to boost the robotics industry. Read more.

The power play behind Hyperion, Mark Zuckerberg’s colossal data center being built in rural Louisiana

$10 billion of investment. Code names to disguise projects and companies. Mixed opinions. Skyrocketing property values. And enough tax breaks to pay every state cop in Louisiana for seven years.

Go deeper.

Spot XRP ETFs pass $1 billion in assets. It’s a noteworthy green shoot in the crypto space, as bitcoin and its ETFs have struggled, and XRP itself is down nearly 15% over the past month. Read more.

A whistle-stop tour of the state of artificial intelligence
Taking stock of the winners, losers, and users of the AI revolution so far.
Nearly 20% of Meta’s Chinese ad revenue came from scams and other banned content: report
The company apparently let the ad fraud slide since it contributed billions in revenue.
The Trump administration is recruiting a “US Tech Force” for two year stints in government
The deal: for two years, participating companies will supply qualifying workers to do a stint as a federal employee, working on AI, cybersecurity, and data analytics.
GM adds Apple Music to select new vehicles, racing to fill the gap left by CarPlay’s absence
In October, GM said it plans to remove support for Apple CarPlay and Android Auto in all of its new vehicles in the coming years.
Deutsche Bank highlights four roadblocks for tech CEOs' obsession: data centers in space
The good news: “there are clearly technical challenges to making this a viable endeavor but these seem to be engineering constraints as opposed to physics,” per Deutsche Bank.

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