Novo Nordisk, the maker of Ozempic, has developed an experimental anti-obesity pill that has shown promising results in early trials.
In the stock market, the Nasdaq Composite surged by 1.5%, gaining 277 points on Monday afternoon, following President Joe Biden’s announcement that he would withdraw from the presidential race and endorse Vice President Kamala Harris. During this period, the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose by 0.3% while the S&P 500 increased by 1.1%.
A betting platform, Polymarket, has forecasted Harris as the Democratic nominee, with PredictIt, based in New Zealand, predicting that she will become the 47th president of the United States.
In a separate development, shares of Nvidia climbed by 4% after reports revealed that the company is developing a version of its Blackwell AI chips tailored for the Chinese market. Nvidia plans to collaborate with local distributor Inspur, with the new chip, named the “B20,” expected to begin shipping in the second quarter of 2025. The company has not commented on the news.
Meanwhile, Tesla’s stock rose nearly 5% on the eve of its earnings report. CEO Elon Musk is anticipated to provide updates on the company’s upcoming robotaxi reveal. He stated on X that Tesla aims to have low production humanoid robots for internal use next year and plans for higher production for external companies by 2026.
On the downside, cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike faced repercussions from a significant global tech outage last week. The company reported that of the approximately 8.5 million affected Windows devices, many have returned to operational status, although its stock was down over 13%, trading around $263 by Monday afternoon.
Verizon experienced a substantial drop of nearly 6% following the release of its quarterly earnings report. The company fell short of revenue expectations, reporting $32.8 billion for the second quarter against an anticipated $33.06 billion. Its earnings per share met expectations at $1.15, but the trend of customers retaining old phones longer than usual has negatively impacted upgrade rates for telecom providers.