Global Stock Markets

SpaceX raised second-quarter capital expenditures to $18.4 billion, up from $10 billion in the first quarter, using its initial public earnings call to defend massive artificial intelligence spending. By applying aerospace engineering from reusable rockets to ground infrastructure, the company generated $2.6 billion in Q2 AI revenue—a 213% sequential increase—and secured $14.1 billion in contracted cloud services agreements. The scaling directly supplies cloud buyers including Anthropic and Google, while drawing heavily on Nvidia's Vera Rubin GPU architecture. Dissenting analysts questioned whether power and cooling bottlenecks could cap execution, but management projected bringing up to 20 gigawatts online by 2027, up from 1.4 gigawatts at quarter-end. A failure to clear the year-end capacity targets by year-end would invalidate claims that rocket engineering resolves data center deployment hurdles.

Amazon-owned Zoox received temporary NHTSA permission to deploy up to 2,500 custom driverless vehicles annually without manual controls, expanding to a 5,000-vehicle ceiling over two years. The regulatory green light enables Zoox to immediately begin commercial paid rides in Las Vegas, bypassing human safety-driver requirements that limit traditional passenger retrofits. The decision directly impacts driverless rivals like Tesla, whose unapproved Cybercab service remains legally restricted to supervised tests in select Texas and Florida markets. Meanwhile, fleet operations manager Avis Budget Group and legacy automakers face increased pressure as purpose-built autonomous hailing commercializes without steering controls.

M/I Homes allocated 78% of second-quarter sales to spec inventory, lifting closings 15% to 2,387 homes while national new home sales dropped 5.6% year-over-year in June. The heavy reliance on rate buydowns pushed gross profit margins down to 22.0% from 24.7% a year ago. The strategy channels discounted home loans through internal lender M/I Financial, LLC to absorb elevated borrowing costs for entry-level buyers, while squeezing regional homebuilder peers competing in key markets across Texas, Florida, and the Carolinas.